THE  LIBRARY    , 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


PLURIVERSE 


The  Hound  of  Heaven  is  on  bis  own  trail,  and  the 
vestige  still  lures  the  scent  of  a  foregone  conclusion 


BENJAMIN     PAUL     BLOOD 


PLURIVERSE 

An  Essay  in  the  Philosophy  of  Pluralism 

BY 

BENJAMIN  PAUL  BLOOD 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 
HORACE  MEYER  KALLEN,  Pn.D. 


BOSTON 

MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 
1920 


COPYRIGHT -1920 
BY    MARSHALL    JONES    COMPANY 


THE-PLIMPTON-PKESS 
NOHWOOD-MASS-U-S-A 


TO  MY  FRIEND 

SPENCER  KELLOGG 


2042112 


AUTHOR'S  FOREWORD 

IT  was  in  the  year  1860  that  there  came  to  me, 
through  the  necessary  use  of  anaesthetics,  a 
Revelation  or  insight  of  the  immemorial  Mys- 
tery which  among  enlightened  peoples  still  persists 
as  the  philosophical  secret  or  problem  of  the  world. 
It  is  an  illumination  of  the  cosmic  centre,  in  which 
that  field  of  thought  where  haunt  the  topics  of  fate, 
origin,  reason  and  divinity  glows  for  the  moment  in 
an  inevitable  but  hardly  communicable  appreciation 
of  the  genius  of  being;  it  is  an  initiation,  histor- 
ically realized  as  such,  into  the  oldest  and  most  inti- 
mate and  ultimate  truth.  Whoever  attains  and  re- 
members it,  or  remembers  of  it,  is  graduated  beyond 
instruction  in  "spiritual  things";  but  to  those  who 
are  philosophically  given  it  will  recur  as  a  condition 
which,  if  we  are  to  retain  a  faith  in  reason,  should 
seem  amenable  to  articulate  expression,  for  it  is 
obviously  what  philosophers  fail  of. 

After  fourteen  years  of  this  experience  at  varying 
intervals,  I  published  in  1874  "The  Anaesthetic  Reve- 
lation and  The  Gist  of  Philosophy,"  not  assuming 
to  define  therein  the  purport  of  the  illumination,  but 
rather  to  signalize  the  experience,  and  in  a  resume 
of  philosophy  to  show  wherein  that  had  come  short 
of  it.  My  brochure  was  indifferently  reviewed,  ex- 
cept that  William  James  treated  it  seriously  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly.  But  afterward  submitting  it  to 

vii 


viii  AUTHOR'S   FOREWORD 

the  poet  Tennyson,  I  immediately  received  from  the 
laureate  a  cordial  and  explicit  confirmation  out  of 
his  own  occasional  abstractions,  while  not  in  a  fully 
normal  state,  yet  impressing  me  as  likely  to  be 
of  identical  illumination.  Many  other  responses 
came  to  me  in  the  course  of  time,  announcing  simi- 
lar strangely  inexpressible  memories,  until  I  learned 
that  nearly  every  hospital  and  dental  office  has  its 
reminiscences  of  patients  who,  after  a  brief  anaes- 
thesia, uttered  confused  fragments  of  some  inarticu- 
late import  which  always  had  to  do  with  the  mystery 
of  life,  of  fate,  continuance,  necessity  and  cognate 
abstractions,  and  all  demanding  "What  is  it?" 
"What  does  it  all  mean,  or  amount  to?"  Such  is 
what  is  known  esoterically,  or  among  its  compara- 
tively few  illuminati,  as  the  anaesthetic  revelation. 

I  let  it  drift  along  for  years,  for  there  seemed 
nothing  to  be  made  of  it,  or  out  of  it,  except  that  it 
drove  me  more  and  more  to  the  realization  of  phil- 
osophy as  "of  all  our  vanities  the  motliest,"  while 
yet  the  confirmations  of  the  homogeneity  of  the  ex- 
perience came  faster  and  more  various. 

For  there  comes  a  wondrous  and  congratulatory 
sense  of  reminiscence  with  the  experience  itself, 
which  exalts  this  immediate  mental  phenomenon  to 
the  solemnity  of  fate  and  prehistoric  necessity;  a 
sense  of  life  and  the  world  falling  of  its  own  weight 
into  the  vacuity  of  the  future,  rather  than  as  an 
ejected  superfluity  or  surfeit  of  the  past;  a  sense 
that  it  was  always  so,  and  has  to  be  so.  It  is  this 
reminiscence  of  the  immemorial,  the  "time  out  of 
mind,"  which  only  later  could  have  become  the 
Adamic  and  aboriginal,  that  makes  it  supernally  the 


AUTHOR'S    FOREWORD  ix 

Revelation.  It  is  this,  too,  that  secularizes  the  an- 
cient mystery,  and  leaves  it  congenital  and  familiar 
with  the  humor  and  pathos  of  life;  that  gives  the 
weirdness  and  thrill  to  occasions  of  birth  and  death 
and  marriage;  that  makes  the  rustic  halt  and  keep 
his  countenance  at  the  most  absurd  occurrence; 
that  puts  a  sting  of  danger  into  the  homeliest  of 
proverbs ;  that  makes  us  cheer  when  the  awkward 
horse  wins  the  race,  and  when  Portia's  picture  is 
found  in  the  leaden  casket ;  when  fair  Titania  yields 
the  flower  of  her  cheek  to  the  hairy  and  grotesque 
Bottom;  when  we  call  the  heaven-inspired  weak- 
minded  person  a  "natural." 

This  singular  insight  obviously  belongs  to,  or  im- 
plicates or  calls  for,  what  is  known  as  philosophy. 
But  turning  thereto,  one  finds  philosophy  itself  in 
such  a  vagarious  and  unsettled  condition,  as  having 
no  tribunal  nor  generally  acknowledged  authority, 
that  its  promiscuous  precepts  have  no  judicial  stand- 
ing. In  fact,  philosophy,  at  least  of  the  unprofes- 
sional sort,  has  largely  deserted  the  field  whereon 
alone  this  topic  can  be  exploited.  What  it  most 
needs  is  language;  but  almost  disqualifying  logic, 
philosophy  seems  to  have  turned  for  light  and  guid- 
ance to  biology  and  the  inarticulate  instincts  of  mere 
life. 

The  plain  truth  is  that  the  modern  student  of  phil- 
osophy has  been  baffled,  daunted  and  discomfited  by 
a  fake  esotericism,  arbitrarily  technical  in  terms  and 
presumptions,  wholly  problematical  in  its  own  cote- 
ries —  delighting,  as  Kant  protested,  in  the  confu- 
sion of  the  plain  man.  The  thoughtful  spirit  finds 
the  interest  of  the  problem  unabated,  although  so 


x  AUTHOR'S   FOREWORD 

many  novelties  invite  the  popular  attention  that 
there  is  left  even  for  him  but  little  of  that  fine  old 
leisure  in  which  philosophy  was  once  the  pride  and 
the  prestige  of  the  race. 

It  is  this  problem,  and  the  Revelation  of  it,  which 
is  the  import  and  background  of  my  book. 

In  the  popular  sense  the  book  begins  with  a  propo- 
sition of  positive  science,  one  that  the  astronomers 
rarely  consider,  although  it  involves  the  determining 
element  in  all  their  wonderful  calculations,  the  prop- 
osition that  a  numerical  or  limited  set  of  movable 
stars,  pervaded  by  a  uniform  attraction,  would  all 
come  together  in  one  conglomerate  mass;  and  that 
those  which  we  do  observe  must  be  either  held  apart 
by  others  still  beyond  them,  and  these  others  still  by 
others  indefinitely  without  end,  or  else  by  some  arbi- 
trary and  superstitious  and  unscientific  agency. 

And  the  fact  is  clearly  apparent,  to  common  sense, 
that  if  the  stars  in  their  multitude  do  thus  go  on  and 
on  interminably,  there  can  be  no  comprehension  nor 
comprehender  of  them  as  a  whole,  or  as  a  one,  or  as 
all;  and  that  no  pressure  or  formation  or  manage- 
ment can  come  to  them  from  without.  But  this  in- 
ference, seemingly  so  sure,  is  conditioned  upon  the 
natural  understanding  that  the  space  which  con- 
tains the  stars  would  go  on,  whether  with  or  with- 
out them;  and  this  understanding  has  been  rudely 
shaken  by  "idealism,"  a  doctrine  that  outer  things 
are  at  least  partly  determined  by  the  knowing  of 
them,  and  that  space  is  not  physical  extensity,  but 
mental  or  spiritual  freedom  to  extend. 

This  doctrine  (which  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  rankly 
characterized  as  insanity)  badly  shatters  the  in- 


AUTHOR'S    FOREWORD  xi 

tegrity  of  all  objective  things;  and  it  is  abetted 
scientifically  by  the  microscope  —  for  instance  in  the 
important  matter  of  size  —  showing  that  all  sizes 
are  determined  by  the  lenses  of  vision,  which  they 
surely  are.  Color  and  form  and  tangibility  also  are 
found  to  be  referable  to  organic  structure;  the  dif- 
ference of  things  is  not  a  property  of  things  them- 
selves, etc.,  so  that  for  an  explanation  of  vision  and 
distinction  and  space  we  have  to  go  behind  both 
the  eye  and  the  mind,  to  "metaphysics." 

And  although  reality  as  a  whole  (a  one,  an  all,  or 
totality)  may  not  be  known  by  a  comprehension  from 
without  —  since  full  comprehension  must  include 
the  spirit  which  comprehends  —  yet  the  psycholo- 
gists insist  that  it  can  be  comprehended  from  within 
by  self-relation;  that  it  is  at  once  in-itself  and  for- 
itself,  a  subject-object,  and  they  appeal  to  the  com- 
mon "self-consciousness"  as  its  empirical  proof. 

All  these  topics  have  long  since  been  treated  with 
a  desperate  persistence  and  an  astonishing  ingenuity, 
which  have  necessitated  and  must  condone  the  pos- 
sibly tiresome  chapters  which  follow.  But  however 
these  chapters  may  disqualify  the  philosophy  of  the 
past,  they  do  not  assume  to  replace  it  by  a  better  on 
the  same  lines.  The  leading  expectation  of  this  book 
is  to  signalize  the  anaesthetic  revelation. 

The  most  overt  and  beaten  path  into  philosophical 
curiosity  is  at  its  division  of  reality  into  static  and 
dynamic,  as  these  notions  are  exemplified  in  eternity 
and  time,  and  in  the  duplexity  of  the  one  and  the 
many.  To  this  duplexity  we  now  devote  our  first 
working  chapter. 

BENJAMIN  PAUL  BLOOD. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION xv 

I.     DUPLEXITY I 

II.  IDEALISM 38 

III.  MONISM 65 

IV.  CAUSE 88 

V.  SELF-RELATION no 

VI.  THE  NEGATIVE 156 

VII.  ANCILLARY  UNITY  AND    THE    PRESENT 

TENSE 172 

VIII.  JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL 182 

IX.  THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION     .     .     .  204 
SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY:    THE  POETICAL 

ALPHABET 246 


Xlll 


INTRODUCTION 


WHEN,  in  As  You  Like  it,  Shakespeare 
makes  Touchstone  ask  William,  "Hast  any 
philosophy  in  thee,  Shepherd?"  the  thing 
that  Touchstone  means  is  a  certain  wisdom  and 
vision  of  life,  serenity  and  resignation  mingled,  such 
as  Jacques  possessed  and  Hamlet  yearned  for,  and 
whose  perfect  example  in  the  works  of  Shakespeare 
is  Prospero.  Its  varieties  in  the  tradition  of 
European  thinking  are  not  numerous,  systems  of 
philosophy  exhibiting  always  the  temper  of  serenity 
or  of  resignation,  with  the  missing  member  of  the 
twain  replaced  by  acquiescence  or  ecstasy  or  sorrow 
or  security  or  bitterness.  The  overruling  quality 
in  each  system,  the  essential  of  its  tone,  no  matter 
what  its  type,  is  tranquillity.  The  mind  may  be  that 
of  Seneca  or  of  Schopenhauer;  in  and  through  its 
philosophy  it  has  found  repose,  its  problems  solved, 
its  seekings  successfully  at  end. 

This  aspect  of  the  temper  of  philosophy  has,  how- 
ever, another  side,  a  complement  psychologically  and 
historically  antecedent,  logically  later,  a  sort  of 
father-brother  who  divides  the  mastery  of  the  house 
of  thought.  Philosophy  is  a  quest  no  less  than  it 
is  an  attainment,  a  battle  no  less  than  it  is  a  peace. 
Its  wont  is  that  of  an  appetency  and  a  yearning, 

xv 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

as  its  use  is  that  of  a  fulfilment  which  is  the  con- 
summation and  dissolution  of  appetency  and  yearn- 
ing. Its  history  is  of  system  replacing  system, 
argument  argument,  in  the  ambition  to  affirm  that 
state  of  enlightenment  and  security  which  outlaws 
both  system  and  argument,  and  constitutes  what 
Benjamin  Paul  Blood,  the  subject  of  this  essay, 
calls  "the  satisfaction  of  philosophy."  There  is,  as 
he  truly  perceives,  a  satisfaction  beyond  philosophy 
which  philosophy  seeks,  which  only  philosophy  can 
seek,  and  which,  it  may  be  ventured,  only  philosophy 
can  attain.  To  the  relation  between  that  satis- 
faction and  the  hungry  reasoning  that  pursues  it 
there  pertains  a  high  comedy,  perhaps  the  most 
piteous  and  ironic  of  all  the  comedies  into  which  the 
human  spirit  propels  itself.  It  is  the  comedy  of  a 
deliverance,  whereof,  always,  "the  rest  is  silence." 
There  is  hardly  a  supremely  great  thinker  who  does 
not  exemplify  it.  Plato,  aiming  by  dialectic  at  pos- 
session of  the  absolute  good  which  is  the  ineffable 
repudiation  of  all  dialectic;  Plotinus,  at  endless 
trouble  to  demonstrate  the  indemonstrability  of  the 
ineffable  One ;  St.  Thomas,  Spinoza,  Hegel,  Bergson, 
any  philosopher  you  will ;  each  is  in  one  way  or 
another  at  great  pains  to  reason  out  the  ultimate 
nescience  of  reason,  the  swallowing  up  and  termina- 
tion of  reason :  to  reason  out  a  state  where  the  act  of 
reasoning  no  longer  signifies  and  its  end  and  be- 
ginning are  joined  in  one.  The  attainment  of  this 
state  is  somehow  an  initiation.  Its  being  is  a  mys- 
tery. Its  attributes  are  totality  and  eternity  and 
goodness.  Its  apprehension  is  a  revelation  of  the 
instancy  of  time,  of  the  interpenetrative  simultaneity 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

of  the  primary  and  the  ultimate  inwardness  of  be- 
ing, of  nature  at  once  immemorial  and  inveterate, 
the  first  thing  and  the  last  thing,  and  the  real  es- 
sence of  man. 

Much  of  the  ratiocination  of  the  philosophic 
tradition  consists  of  recounting  the  aliency  of  man- 
kind from  this,  its  proper  essence,  and  of  providing 
the  instruments  and  the  technique  of  its  self-recovery. 
Sometimes  these  instruments  are  forged  and  au- 
thorized by  the  discrediting  of  reason  and  the  justi- 
fication of  faith  or  instinct  or  intuition.  Some- 
times they  are  provided  by  the  transmutation  of 
reason  itself.  But  however  they  are  fabricated, 
their  use  is  to  establish  and  sustain  a  security 
already  assumed,  regarding  the  goodness,  the  unity 
and  the  eternity  of  being,  and  requiring  rather  the 
rejection  of  its  contra veners  than  its  own  demon- 
stration. Ultimately,  this  security  is  the  ultimately 
desirable  revealing  its  self,  and  in  the  act  convicting 
those  whom  it  illuminates  of  its  veridiction.  It  is 
ever  an  object  of  faith  rather  than  of  proof,  and 
faith,  as  Mr.  Blood  says  in  the  "Anaesthetic  Reve- 
lation," "comes  not  by  doubtful  tests,  but  is  ever  a 
foregone  conclusion." 

It  is  such  a  foregone  conclusion  that  Mr.  Blood 
pursues.  His  pursuit  differs  in  many  important  re- 
spects from  the  traditional  one.  But  most  of  all 
in  this  —  that  he  makes  it  knowingly.  "The  Hound 
of  Heaven,"  he  declares  in  his  device  for  Pluri- 
verse,  "is  on  his  own  trail,  and  the  vestige  still 
lures  the  scent  of  a  foregone  conclusion."  What  he 
means  —  and  takes  the  whole  of  this  one  book  to  say 
—  is  that  the  mystery  of  existence  is  not  a  hidden 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

thing  like  a  face  behind  a  mask,  but  is  existence 
itself,  its  actual  process,  both  as  search  and  as  satis- 
faction. That,  therefore,  men  seek  what  they  al- 
ready possess,  like  a  dog  hunting  its  own  tail. 
There  is  nothing  behind,  Mr.  Blood  would  reiterate. 
The  face  and  the  heart  of  being  are  in  identical 
place  and  of  identical  substance ;  men  are  self -deluded 
when  they  attempt,  as  philosophers  or  otherwise,  to 
uncover  an  essence  or  a  principle  different  in  nature 
from  that  which  science  apprehends  or  the  daily  life 
encounters.  And  he  would  say  it  as  one  speaking 
with  authority,  authority  ineluctable  as  the  "anaes- 
thetic revelation,"  its  source  and  sanction,  wherein, 
at  the  moment  of  awakening  from  anesthetic  sleep, 
there  gets  accomplished  that  "stare  of  being  at 
itself,"  of  which  all  revelation  must  consist.  The 
reliance  on  experience  of  this  kind,  which  can  be 
suggested,  pointed  to,  designated,  perhaps  even 
shared  —  "signalized"  is  Mr.  Blood's  word  —  but 
cannot  as  yet  be  analyzed  or  described,  makes  of  him 
a  mystic;  and  indeed  his  doctrine  abounds  in  the 
qualities  wherewith  mysticism  is  distinguished  —  not- 
ably the  rejection  of  ratiocination  as  the  ground  for 
security,  the  warranting  of  security  upon  ineffable 
experience,  the  subsequent  use  of  ratiocination  to 
persuade  of  the  inescapable  authority  of  this  ex- 
perience. But  also,  Mr.  Blood's  teaching  in  certain 
respects  differs  from  the  mystic  type  to  the  point 
of  uniqueness.  He  holds  the  revelation,  overwhelm- 
ingly convincing  as  it  is,  a  thing  commonplace  and 
secular,  confirming  instead  of  outlawing,  the  daily 
life  of  men.  The  world  it  yields  him  seems  some- 
what ambiguous,  but  it  is  a  "pluriverse"  far  more 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

definitely  than  a  "universe."  In  a  word,  Mr.  Blood 
is  a  mystic  of  the  commonplace,  his  certainties  are 
certainties  of  the  ineffable  truth  and  reality  of 
the  changeful  flux  and  disparity  and  multiplicity  of 
the  daily  life. 

The  latter  variation  from  the  tradition  particu- 
larly impressed  William  James.  Discussing  Mr. 
Blood's  philosophy  in  the  Hibbert  Journal  (July, 
1910)  he  celebrated  him  as  a  "pluralistic  mystic." 
"The  practically  unanimous  tradition  of  'regular* 
mysticism,"  he  wrote,  "has  been  unquestionably 
monistic;  and  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  characteristic 
of  mystics  to  speak,  not  as  the  scribes,  but  as  men 
who  have  'been  there'  and  seen  with  their  own  eyes, 
I  think  that  this  sovereign  manner  must  have  made 
some  other  pluralistic-minded  students  hesitate,  as 
I  confess  that  it  has  often  given  pause  to  me.  One 
cannot  criticise  the  vision  of  a  mystic  —  one  can  but 
pass  it  by,  or  else  accept  it  as  having  some  amount 
of  evidential  weight.  I  felt  unable  to  do  either  with 
a  good  conscience  until  I  met  with  Mr.  Blood.  His 
mysticism,  which  may,  if  one  likes,  be  understood 
as  monistic  in  this  earlier  utterance  (the  Anaesthetic 
Revelation)  develops  in  the  later  ones  a  sort  of  'left- 
wing'  voice  of  defiance,  and  breaks  into  what  to  my 
ear  has  a  radically  pluralistic  sound."  This  sound 
is  somewhat  tempered  in  "Pluriverse,"  but  it  is  reso- 
nant and  definitive  enough  to  justify  the  book's  title, 
even  though  the  existence  it  designates  is  not  shown 
with  certainty  to  be  either  monistic  or  pluralistic. 


II 

The  causes  of  Mr.  Blood's  divergence  and  novelty 
are  more  easily  guessed  at  than  accounted  for. 

They  were  not  in  variety  of  scene  and  society. 
He  hardly  ever  ventured  far  from  home.  Born  in 
the  second  decade  of  the  last  century,  most  of  his 
long  life  of  eighty-six  years  was  spent  in  and  about 
the  dingy  town  of  Amsterdam,  New  York.  He  held 
almost  as  close  to  his  native  scene  as  Kant  and  there 
was  as  little  therein  to  motivate  and  to  explain  his 
thinking  as  there  was  in  Konigsberg  to  explain  the 
latter's.  His  life  is  marked  by  a  normality  unusual 
in  a  mystic.  Neither  do  his  ancestry  nor  his  educa- 
tion enlighten  us.  His  breed  was  Scotch-Irish,  that 
pre-Revolutionary  type  of  tough  mind,  obstinate  will 
and  rigid  faith  which  had  early  in  the  eighteenth 
century  been  driven  by  famine  from  Ulster  to  these 
shores.  It  carried  with  it  a  resentment  against  Brit- 
ain which  animated  the  Revolution  and  saved  it  from 
disintegration  during  more  than  one  crisis.  It  im- 
ported a  pattern  of  congregational  organization  that 
influenced  the  form  of  polity  which,  after  the  Revo- 
lution, the  country  adopted.  These  things  aside,  it 
was  not  further  distinguished.  It  had  the  normal 
endowment  of  practical  competency  in  affairs,  and 
speculative  regularity  in  theology.  The  bulk  of  it 
pioneered,  constituting  the  westernmost  wave  of  the 
European  strain  that  has  now  won  and  possessed 
the  North  American  continent.  A  percentage  set- 
tled, took  root,  found  an  equilibrium  of  life  capable 
of  transmission  and  continuity,  and  used  up  its  sur- 
plusages of  energy  in  feud,  evangel  or  philosophy. 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

The  descendants  of  this  percentage  are  to  be  found, 
from  its  migratory  beginnings  to  the  present  day,  all 
along  the  Appalachian  range,  from  the  Adirondacks 
and  Catskills  to  the  Ozarks.  Thus,  the  ancestral 
farm,  situated  in  the  town  of  Florida,  had  been  in  the 
possession  of  the  Blood  family  some  one  hundred  and 
thirty  years  when  it  came  at  last  in  the  hands  of 
Benjamin  Paul,  to  work  as  his  fathers  had  worked 
it  before  him,  for  the  family's  provision  and  con- 
tinuance. His  education  appears  to  have  been  as 
normally  American  as  his  breed  —  the  public  schools 
of  Amsterdam,  Amsterdam  Academy,  a  period  at 
Union  College.  No  precocity  is  recorded  beyond  a 
far  from  unusual  speculative  propensity  in  adoles- 
cence, a  sensibility  to  language,  and  the  itch  of  au- 
thorship. The  last  seems  to  have  found  relief  in 
letters  to  such  locally-known  newspapers  as  the  Am- 
sterdam Gazette  or  Recorder,  the  Utica  Herald,  the 
Albany  Times.  The  letters  dealt  with  an  astonishing 
diversity  of  subjects,  from  local  petty  politics  or  the 
tricks  of  spiritualistic  mediums  to  principles  of 
industry  and  finance  and  profundities  of  metaphy- 
sics. Almost  the  whole  of  Blood's  mental  life,  from 
his  eighteenth  year  to  his  eighty-sixth,  has  found 
record  and  expression  in  these  letters.  The  qualities 
of  thought  and  style  which  had  attracted  William 
James  to  him,  appear,  prior  to  1874,  to  have  been 
but  foreshadowed  in  them.  Their  fulness  seems 
to  have  come  into  being  only  with  the  composition  of 
"The  Anaesthetic  Revelation." 

Nor  does  the  range  of  Mr.  Blood's  independent 
reading  appear  to  have  been  wide.  His  references 
and  allusions  show  an  intimate  knowledge  of  Shake- 


INTRODUCTION 

speare  and  of  Plato,  and  a  customary  familiarity 
with  the  Bible.  He  has  read  the  German  philoso- 
phies current  during  his  young  manhood  —  notably 
Hegel.  He  is  conversant  with  Hegelians  at  home  and 
abroad.  He  knows  the  American  transcendentalists, 
particularly  Emerson,  to  whom  he  defers.  He  has 
sharp  things  to  say  about  W.  T.  Harris,  quondam 
Commissioner  of  Education,  for  whose  Journal  of 
Speculative  Philosophy  he  rewrote  a  number  of 
philosophical  letters,  and  he  pounds  the  "Universol- 
ogy"  of  Stephen  Pearl  Andrews  as  if  it  were  impor- 
tant. On  the  other  hand,  he  is,  after  1874,  in 
epistolary  contact  with  a  great  many  men  of  personal 
eminence  and  literary  distinction  —  with  Stirling,  the 
English  interpreter  of  Hegel,  with  Edmund  Gurney, 
with  Sir  William  Ramsay,  with  James,  with  Emerson, 
with  Tennyson.  Most  of  the  correspondence  touches 
the  inwardness  of  the  anaesthetic  revelation.  Mr. 
Blood  had  sent  about  copies  of  this  tract  —  printed, 
like  all  his  things  except  his  letters,  at  his  own  ex- 
pense —  and  for  a  time  conducted  an  extensive  cor- 
respondence anent  its  subject-matter.  The  exchange 
of  letters  led  in  cases  eventually  to  a  circulation  — 
in  the  instance  of  William  James  to  an  exchange  — 
of  photographs,  and  to  subsequent  amenities  of 
which  two  are  evidential :  Tennyson's  "the  face  is  that 
of  one  born  to  grapple  with  difficulties  metaphysical 
and  other,"  and  James's,  "I  am  so  delighted  to  find 
that  a  metaphysician  can  be  anything  else  than  a 
spavined,  dyspeptic  individual  fit  for  no  other  use." 
It  may  be  that  the  constitutional  vigor  recorded 
by  the  photographs  is  the  beginning  and  end  of  the 
idiosyncracy  of  Blood's  genius.  He  is  declared  never 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

in  the  course  of  his  long  life  to  have  known  illness 
of  any  kind  or  to  have  been  confined  to  his  bed  as 
an  invalid.  He  is  that  unusual  event  in  the  tradi- 
tion of  mysticism  and  metaphysics,  a  healthy  mystic. 
The  point  of  departure  for  his  mysticism  seems  to 
have  been  an  anaesthesia  induced  by  nitrous  oxide 
or  ether.  Its  effect  on  him  was  not  unlike  that  of 
a  religious  conversion.  The  experience  which  came 
in  waking  from  this  artificial  slumber  reset  his  con- 
sciousness and  made  of  him  a  poet  and  philosopher 
and  mystic.  His  first  and  most  beautiful  attempt 
to  signalize  it  he  composed  at  the  age  of  forty-two 
as  "The  Anaesthetic  Revelation,"  after,  he  declares, 
"experiments  ranging  over  nearly  fourteen  years." 
His  second  and  final  attempt  is  "Pluriverse,"  a  modi- 
fication, expansion  and  elaboration  of  the  essen- 
tials of  the  first.  The  interval  between  them  is  filled 
with  letters  to  the  press,  letters  and  still  more  let- 
ters (signed  mostly  "Paul"),  a  poem  or  two,  the 
more  or  less  voluminous  correspondence  already  men- 
tioned, and  the  quiet  almost  anonymous  life  in  Am- 
sterdam, New  York.  He  was  waiting,  he  wrote  his 
friends,  waiting  for  the  necessary  terms  and  ex- 
pressions, fearful  always  of  being  "too  soon  at  last." 
He  had  high  hopes  of  what  might  come  of  an  ade- 
quate expression  of  his  insight :  "Thus  you  may  see," 
he  declared  in  a  letter  to  the  Springfield  Republican 
shortly  after  William  James  had  died,  "that  this 
mumbling  and  mouthing  mystery  of  the  cosmos  still 
hovers  over  hospital  and  laboratory,  awaiting  articu- 
lation; like  the  wild  hawk  of  Walt  Whitman,  un- 
tamed and  as  yet  untranslatable,  it  sounds  its  bar- 
baric yawp  over  the  books  of  the  world.  If  I  can 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

express  it,  as  I  may  in  a  year  or  two,  or  in  a  decade 
or  two,  as  it  shall  happen,  my  book  will  be  more  than 
one  of  the  'Books  of  the  Week,'  for  therein  the  fact 
may  appear  that  Sinai  and  Calvary  were  but  sacred 
stepping-stones  to  this  secular  elevation  where  free 
thought  may  range  hereafter,  when  the  old  scares  of 
superstition  shall  have  vanished  to  the  limbo  whence 
they  came." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  composition  of  "Pluri- 
verse"  took  nearly  a  decade.  What  fell  between  it 
and  "The  Anaesthetic  Revelation"  appears  to  have 
mattered  little.  Both  essays  signalize  the  same  essen- 
tial experience.  Each  sucks  up  from  the  philosophic 
atmosphere  of  its  generation  the  prevailing  meta- 
physical tone.  In  each  this  tone  is  tempered  by  a 
certain  resilient  straitness  which  is  of  the  unrelent- 
ing taste  and  predisposition  of  "Paul"  alone.  By 
these  the  monism  of  the  "Anaesthetic  Revelation"  is 
keyed  down  with  the  observation  that  "each  and 
every  one  of  us  is  the  One  that  remains."  By  these 
the  high  flights  of  Hegelian  rationalism  of  the  same 
document  are  made  to  culminate  in  the  pronounce- 
ment that  "the  naked  life  is  realized  outside  of  sanity 
altogether;  and  it  is  the  instant  contrast  of  this 
'tasteless  water  of  souls'  with  formal  thought  as  we 
'come  to'  that  leaves  in  the  patient  an  astonishment 
that  the  awful  mystery  of  Life  is  at  last  but  a  homely 
and  a  common  thing."  By  these,  again,  the  pluralism 
of  "Pluriverse"  is  mitigated  with  the  hope  "that  the 
fond  monism  that  we  have  dialectically  disparaged 
may  be  at  least  transcendentally  rehabilitated."  As 
the  monism  is  a  reverberation  of  the  transcenden- 
talism current  in  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth, 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

so  the  pluralism  is  an  absorption  of  the  Jamesian 
metaphysic  of  the  twentieth  century.  Analogously, 
as  the  gist  of  philosophy  was  declared  to  have  been 
confirmed  or  paralleled  in  revelation  during  the  sev- 
enties and  eighties  of  the  last  century,  so  it  is,  in  its 
intellectualistic  aspects,  both  required  and  rejected 
in  the  generation  of  James  and  Bergson.  Whatever 
the  age,  the  conclusion  —  foregone  —  is  the  Revela- 
tion, "given  you  as  the  old  Adamic  secret,  which  you 
then  feel  that  all  intelligence  must  sometime  know  or 
have  known ;  yet  ludicrous  in  its  familiar  simplicity, 
as  somewhat  that  any  man  should  always  perceive 
at  his  best,  if  his  head  were  only  level,  but  which  in 
our  ordinary  thinking  has  grown  into  a  thousand 
creeds  and  theories  dignified  as  religion  and  phil- 
osophy." 

in 

If,  in  his  serene  obscurity,  Mr.  Blood  can  be  said 
to  have  had  a  vocation,  it  was  to  celebrate  this  reve- 
lation "ludicrous  in  its  familiar  simplicity."  His 
style  as  celebrant  has  the  hymnic  quality,  and  the 
meaning  of  his  diction  —  particularly  when  most 
metaphysical  or  when  closest  to  the  revelation  — 
that  tang  of  suggestion  and  overtone  which  ally  it 
to  the  utterance  of  feeling  by  music  rather  than  to 
the  denotation  of  ideas  by  words.  This  quality  he 
shares  with  all  mystics,  as  is  natural  he  should.  The 
range  and  the  depth  of  the  mystical  experience,  its 
completeness  of  emotional  transformation  and  intel- 
lectual readjustment,  the  total  loosening  and  over- 
turning of  the  psyche  which  the  experient  under- 


xxvi  INTRODUCTION 

goes,  cannot  fail  to  initiate  in  any  man  or  woman  a 
mode  of  rhythmic  vocalization  and  imaginative  state- 
ment at  once  exalted  and  colorful.  But  here  again 
Blood  varies  from  the  type  in  that  the  power  of 
such  utterance  is  in  his  work  something  more  than 
occasional.  His  style  is  conscious,  not  reflex,  an 
effect  of  will  rather  than  of  passion.  He  is  not,  as 
his  reader  must  see,  a  constructive  writer,  even  in 
a  work  so  sustained  as  "Pluriverse" ;  James  describes 
him  as  "aphoristic  and  oracular  rather  .  .  .  some- 
times dialetic,  sometimes  poetic  and  sometimes  mystic 
in  his  manner,  sometimes  monistic  and  sometimes 
pluralistic  in  his  matter."  Nevertheless  there  is  that 
even  in  his  dryest  passages  which  never  fails  to  cap- 
ture heart  and  ear  with  a  felicity  of  cadence  and  of 
precision  that  points  to  the  disciplined  mastery  of 
medium  attainable  only  through  the  training  and 
perfecting  of  a  gift  inborn.  Blood,  like  Poe,  has  a 
philosophy  of  style,  a  far  profounder  and  more 
subtle  philosophy,  with  declared  affinities  to  the  ob- 
servations of  Burns  and  of  Swedenborg  and  the  sug- 
gestive analysis  that  Plato  made  in  the  "Cratylus." 
The  ideas  constituting  this  analysis  appear  to  have 
occurred  to  Mr.  Blood  altogether  spontaneously, 
when  he  was  a  young  man  just  out  of  his  teens.  They 
are  incorporated  in  the  Supplementary  Essay  to 
"Pluriverse"  under  the  title  "The  Poetical  Alpha- 
bet." 

That  the  subject-matter  of  the  essay  is  not  remote 
from  the  preoccupations  of  the  book  is  conclusively 
established  with  the  declaration  that  "logical  truth 
is  held  to  the  arbitrament  of  language,  the  produc- 
tion and  determination  of  which  are  therefore  of 


INTRODUCTION  xxvii 

prime  importance  in  philosophical  explanation." 
And  forthwith  the  problem  is  attacked  in  the  form  of 
the  question  "why  the  word  icicle  is  not  a  fit  name 
for  a  tub."  Its  answer  is  an  exhibition,  not  an  an- 
alysis or  an  explanation,  of  felt  and  observable  har- 
monies between  things  and  the  names  of  things.  These 
names,  in  their  sound  and  in  their  form,  are  some- 
how the  reverberations  and  the  shadows  of  the  things 
they  stand  for.  How,  Mr.  Blood  has  not  been  at 
pains  to  work  out,  and  perhaps  never  was  equipped 
to  do  so.  The  matter  is  one  for  the  precise  technique 
of  the  psychological  laboratory.  But  its  principle 
—  the  rule  underlying  observations  of  writers  so 
diverse  as  Plato  and  Swedenborg  and  Burns  and 
Blood,  and  tongues  so  different  as  Greek  and  Swedish 
and  English  —  however  difficult  to  demonstrate, 
should  not  be  difficult  to  state.  It  might  be  formu- 
lated as  follows:  The  human  organism,  as  a  unit 
and  in  its  separate  organs,  is  something  like  a  sound- 
ing-board. Knowingly  or  unknowingly  it  as  a  rule 
responds  to,  refracts  and  gives  back  whatever  stim- 
ulus impinges  upon  it.  The  specific  responses  and 
reproductions  which  it  is  conscious  of  are  only  a 
tiny  fraction  of  the  generalized  reverberations  which 
it  is  not  conscious  of.  There  are  "emotion,"  con- 
stantly modifying  the  breathing  and  the  state  of 
the  vocal  chords  and  of  the  other  organs  involved  in 
the  production  of  sound  and  speech.  Now  between 
all  bodily  activities  and  their  causes  and  occasions 
both  physiologists  and  psychologists  have  observed 
a  certain  vibrational  similarity,  or  even  identity. 
This  is  most  noticeable  in  both  conscious  and  un- 
conscious imitations  of  rhythms  and  movements,  but 


xxviii  INTRODUCTION 

it  is  to  be  observed  as  well  in  such  unnormal  expe- 
riences as  color-audition.  In  those  experiences  sound 
seems  to  be  translated  into  and  accompanied  by 
color ;  it  is  this  order  of  succession  which  renders  the 
experience  unnormal.  But  the  reverse  succession,  in 
which  color  is  translated  into  and  accompanied  by 
sound,  incipient  or  actual,  is  far  more  frequent.  In- 
deed, it  is  an  unobserved  commonplace  of  the  daily 
life.  It  takes  place,  moreover,  not  merely  with 
respect  to  color,  and  movement,  but  with  respect  to 
line  and  shape  as  well.  What  is  seen  is  also  sounded ; 
it  is  the  unheard  melody  sweeter  still.  And  there- 
fore icicle  is  not  a  fit  name  for  a  tub  and  "each  of 
the  sounds  represented  by  several  letters  of  the  al- 
phabet is  specially  effective  in  conveying  a  certain 
significance;  and  wherever  language  is  popular  and 
happy  it  is  so  in  accord  with  these  early  intuitions." 
"These  early  intuitions"  are  synonymous  with  the 
transmutive  sensibility  of  any  word-master  to  the 
fugitive  phases  of  the  changing  world  about  him; 
they  are  the  initial  endowment  of  the  poet.  And  Mr. 
Blood  was  a  poet,  whether  he  wrote  verse  or  wrote 
prose.1 

i  James,  in  "A  Pluralistic  Mystic,"  quotes  from  Blood's 
"Apostrophe  to  Freedom,"  his  "Nemesis,"  and  from  "The 
Lion  of  the  Nile."  The  latter  two  were  printed,  through 
James's  interest,  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  1888  and  1889.  "The 
Lion  of  the  Nile"  is  a  very  remarkable  piece  of  writing  both 
for  thought  and  diction.  Concerning  the  former  it  is  worth 
while  quoting  a  letter  from  Blood  to  James,  dated  March  31, 
1887:  "I  have  a  letter  from  Dr.  Stirling  —  full  of  kindness, 
and  a  shake  of  the  head  about  the  Lion;  he  sees  much  beauty, 
etc.,  in  it,  but  says:  'I  am  hopeless  of  the  one  thought  which 
connects  it  altogether.'  Damme  but  I  will  prove  the  connec- 
tion, the  potential  connection,  right  here: — We  all  believe, 


INTRODUCTION  xxix 

With  Blood's  sensibility  to  word-music  there  goes 
also  another  quality  not  usually  associated  there- 
with but  having  in  fact,  as  Blood  himself  adum- 
brated, connections  as  intimate  as  they  are  obscure. 
This  is  logical  skill,  dialectic  power.  It  came  force- 
fully under  the  attention  of  William  James,  review- 
ing Blood  in  1910,  and  what  it  has  lost  in  vigor 
since  that  date,  readers  of  "Pluriverse"  will  concede, 
it  has  gained  in  grace.  Although  "Pluriverse"  gives, 
within  its  wider  structure,  the  total  effect  of  a 
mosaic  rather  than  of  an  architectonic,  there  weaves 
through  the  notable  apothegms,  reflections  and  imag- 
inative flights  into  which  it  lifts  again  and  again 

poetically,  in  metempsychosis,  and  the  Socratic  reminiscence, 
and  the  unity  (Emersonian)  of  intelligence,  whose  idol  is  the 
Sphinx.  The  poem  says,  for  the  spirit  of  championship,  or 
the  champion  spirit  of  the  world:  I  drew  my  life  from  the 
dugs  of  one  that  lived  on  blood  alone,  and  my  consciousness 
is  the  accumulation  [translation]  of  many.  I  trace  back 
through  the  streams  of  this  blood  to  episodes  of  individual 
life  (which  ran  together  in  the  milk  of  my  all-rapacious  dam, 
and  be  damned  to  her).  I  feel  as  Caesar  felt  —  as  Antony 
and  Cleopatra  had  gall  enough  to  feel  that  Caesar  felt.  I 
was  Coriolanus,  I  was  a  gladiator.  I  was  a  condor  —  and 
for  the  matter  of  that  I  was  the  whale  that  swallowed  Jonah. 
Will  any  call  this  pretence  a  dream?  ..."  If  so,  dignity  and 
freedom  are,  no  less.  As  the  poem  concludes: 

Nay,  now  is  but  the  dream, 
When  things  of  greater  hdart  and  wider  mould 
And  deeper  life  and  patience  here  conspire 
To  claim  this  reminiscent  verse  a  phase 
Of  the  world's  championship.  —  Let  be  what  may. 
The  gods  are  dreary  as  the  worshippers; 
As  the  wide  cycles  tire  they  too  have  changed. 
Faint  'neath  its  newest  garb   of  charity 
Flutters   the  heart   divine  in  these   last  years, 
And  low  the  purple  trails,  and  justice  stoops 
To  mercy  weaker  than  the  sin  forgiven; 


xxx  INTRODUCTION 

from  levels  of  the  commonplace,  a  swift  and  compe- 
tent dialectic  whose  force  and  influence  are  of  the 
nature  of  overtone  and  suggestiveness  rather  than 
of  explicit  conviction.  They  do  not  coerce  by  proof, 
they  persuade  by  implication.  As  in  Blood's  diction 
Shakespeare,  the  Bible  and  the  slang  and  vernacu- 
lar current  mingle  their  lights  and  invest  with  the 
glow  of  strange  familiarity  new  perspectives  of 
thought  and  feeling,  so  in  his  argument  common- 
places of  illustration  and  habit  are  suffused  with 
indications  of  the  ineffable,  and  grip  and  redirect, 
without  forcing,  the  mind :  as  when  he  says,  speaking 

Tet  the  patrician  pride,  the  red  disdain 
Self-sustenant  —  more  gracious  in  its  scorning 
Than  e'er,  alas,  Christ-love  in  pitying  tears, 
Remembers  me  on  the  Judean  banners, 
O'er  lands  Levantine  rampant  without  peer; 
The  shuddering  wilds  grew  firm;  the  haggard  cliffs 
Where  conscience  flings  her  troubled  victims  down, 
Caught  peace  from  my  sane  eyes;  e'en  vulgar  life, 
That  knows  no  other  charm,  was  great  through  me. 

And  still  my  worship  lives  in  longing  hearts, 
Human  or  brute  or  bird,  —  for  these  are  one 
In  love  and  longing,  as  my  sphinxes  know 
That  lie  along  the  sands  and  watch  the  River. 
Many  are  the  altars  but  the  flame  t«  one; 
Of  every  hell  the  misery  is  fear, 
And  every  heaven  is  mockery  but  mine. 

Doth  thy  pulse,  quivering  thro  the  pose  of  Ajax, 

Defy  the  lurid  blood  of  the  strong  gods 

As  one  with  them  at  last,  and  one  with  Him  — 

The  longest  wing  in  heaven,  the  deepest  crown. 

Who,  ever  vanquished,  fighting  as  he  falls, 

Still  proves  himself  immortal?  — 

Lo,  it  is  1,  the  Lion  of  the  Nile, 

The  mystery  of  the  winged  human  brute 

Covenant  — the  CHAMPION  spirit  of  the  world. 


INTRODUCTION  xxxi 

of  the  astonishment  that  the  homeliness  of  his  reve- 
lation produces  —  "the  astonishment  is  aggravated 
as  at  a  thing  of  course,  missed  by  sanity  in  over- 
stepping, as  in  too  foreign  a  search,  or  with  too 
eager  an  attention:  as  in  finding  one's  spectacles  on 
one's  nose  or  in  making  in  the  dark  a  higher  step 
than  the  stair."  Deliverances  of  this  kind,  again, 
are  naturally  accompanied,  according  to  the  wont 
and  use  of  the  mystic,  with  a  certain  lordly  impa- 
tience, a  highhandedness  in  the  discussion  of  the 
opinions  and  teachings  of  other  men,  such,  for  ex- 
ample, as  Kant.  But  this  is  an  incident. 

Less  incidental,  because  truly  implicated  in  the 
idiosyncrasy  and  personal  flavor  of  the  man  is  a 
certain  specific  contemporary  irrelevance.  Mr. 
Blood's  contemporaneity  is  of  atmosphere  warmed 
by  personal  glimpses,  it  is  not  of  contact  and  com- 
prehension of  the  living  movements  of  the  day. 
Readers  will  miss  reflection  of  the  vivid  and  poign- 
ant social  concerns  of  the  times ;  of  the  reticulated 
conceptions  of  the  new  realistic  philosophies  and  of 
the  momentous  development  and  implications  of  the 
biologic  and  physical  sciences.  What  to  other 
readers  is  most  coercive  in  Bergson's  doctrine  —  the 
ordered  biological  material  —  is  negligible  to  Blood, 
and  his  observations  in  physiology,  and  his  one  use 
of  physics  in  the  argument  for  the  endless  manyness 
of  the  world  he  set  great  store  by,  are  naive.  And 
who  shall  say  that  there  is  any  harm  done?  Firm 
on  the  rock  of  his  revelation,  Blood,  in  but  not  of 
an  age  that  has  prevailingly  spoken  from  without 
inward,  speaks  from  within  outward.  His  vocation 
has  been  truly  metaphysics ;  he  is  a  dialectician  vindi- 


xxxil  INTRODUCTION 

eating  in  ordered  words  a  faith  in  which  serene  cer- 
tainty and  disillusion  mingle  and  are  one.  Hear  his 
last  word:  "And  now  inexorable  time  admonishes 
me  to  have  done  with  this  world.  I  am  thankful  at 
having  seen  the  show;  and  although  after  eighty- 
five  years,  the  stars  are  still  flickering  slightly,  and 
the  winds  are  something  worn,  I  am  still  clear  and 
confident  in  that  religion  of  courage  and  content 
which  cherishes  neither  regrets  nor  anticipations." 

IV 

The  overture  to  this  finale  is  the  exposure  of 
philosophy's  incompetency  and  the  enthronement  of 
the  brute  datum,  the  fact  and  givenness  of  being, 
through  the  anaesthetic  revelation,  exfoliating  in  a 
more  pertinent  philosophy.  Mr.  Blood  begins  his 
exposure  with  the  consideration  of  the  well-known 
antinomianisms,  made  familiar  by  Kant,  of  the  tra- 
ditional descriptions  of  the  world.  From  the  be- 
ginning thinkers  have  built  inwardly  coherent  and 
mutually  contradictory  metaphysical  systems.  These 
have  been  criticized  by  Kant  and  others,  but  their 
critical  review  is  itself  only  a  dialetical  negation  of 
their  dogmatic  grounds,  and  cannot,  therefore,  es- 
tablish itself  as  having  transcendental  and  hence 
superior  authority.  Experience  is  self-contradic- 
tory, and  any  proposition  may  be  affirmed  or  denied 
of  it.  Not,  however,  absolutely.  This  could  be  ab- 
solutely so  only  if  the  world  were  truly  static  and 
inalterable.  But  it  is  not  that.  Its  staticism  must 
be  proved;  its  dynamicism  can  be  observed.  The 
oppugnance  between  the  two  works  itself  out  em- 


INTRODUCTION  xxxiii 

pirically,  somehow,  in  favor  of  a  cosmic  doing.  This 
doing  is  a  thing  of  chance  and  freedom,  whose  es- 
sence may  be  apprehended  in  the  unaccountable 
gains  of  force  or  motion  in  the  phenomenon  of  mo- 
mentum, in  the  ineluctable  infinitude  of  stars  and 
suns  whose  reciprocal  outward  pull  alone  could  keep 
them  from  falling  together  as  the  inward  pull  of 
"gravitation"  would  compel  any  finite  number  of 
them  to  fall  toward  a  common  centre.  The  gravi- 
tational pull,  the  force  or  motion  of  momentum  is 
each  an  action  which  takes  place.  That  it  does 
take  place  is  a  free  gift  or  eventuation  of  being,  a 
chance,  which  as  chance  is  the  only  sure  thing :  "The 
reliability  and  permanence  of  chance  are  the  most 
consolatory  elements  of  philosophy.  The  notion 
that,  left  to  chance,  all  would  go  wild  and  undepen- 
dable,  miscalculates  experience  and  .  .  .  calls  for  a 
positive  malignity  to  overweigh  the  just  indifference 
or  stolidity  or  essential  inertia  of  things  in  them- 
selves. There  needs  a  positive  and  peremptory  "why 
the  ace  should  come  up  an  inconvenient  number  of 
times.  Justice  is  balance.  The  Good  is  not  best, 
upon  the  whole;  it  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
deserved,  and  it  is  unjust,  by  comparison,  to  the  in- 
different and  the  commonplace;  it  shows  heat  in  the 
bosom  of  fate." 

Nor  do  the  static,  the  necessary,  or  the  eternal 
come  off  better  through  the  demonstration  of  ideal- 
ism. One  aspect  of  the  contentions  of  that  way  of 
thinking,  Mr.  Blood  maintains,  is  correct  and  com- 
monplace. The  mind's  activity,  or  the  body's,  does 
make  a  difference  in  the  thing  it  acts  on,  and  the 
show  and  pageant  of  our  living  world  cannot  help 


xxxiv  INTRODUCTION 

being  a  show  and  pageant  determined  by  our  point  of 
view  and  the  organs  of  our  seeing.  But  once  this 
relativity  is  conceded,  what  then?  The  enterprises 
of  doing  and  thinking  go  on  as  spontaneously,  as 
inexorably,  and  as  provokingly  as  before,  demand- 
ing explanation.  Idealism  has  but  given  a  back  to 
the  pigment  or  added  a  frame  to  the  picture.  The 
form,  matter  and  articulation  of  the  stuff  upon  the 
canvas,  the  sequence  of  line,  shape  and  color,  the 
whole  processes,  of  the  picture  within  the  frame  — 
and  these  are  the  problem  —  have  still  to  be  ac- 
counted for.  Atlas  may  uphold  the  world,  but  the 
order  and  connection  of  what  takes  place  upon  the 
face  thereof,  or  in  its  caverns  underneath  —  what 
have  they  to  do  with  Atlas,  or  Atlas  with  them? 
Idealism  is  no  more  competent  to  resolve  duplexity 
than  any  other  idea  of  the  tradition.  Something 
always  escapes  and  stands  out,  a  distinct  and  ineluc- 
table Other  to  any  system  of  inclusion  that  may  be 
formulated  or  felt.  Each  is  an  eventuation  of 
chance  whose  opposite  might  be  equally  good,  and, 
as  it  appears  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  seems  so. 
Thus  with  all  monisms.  Their  psychological  origi- 
nal is  the  constitutional  egoism  of  the  spirit  of  man ; 
their  production  is  a  process  of  limitation;  their 
ultimate  nature  must  be  that  of  "self-relation"  (an 
idea  known  to  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  as  "the  class  of 
all  classes"  and  rejected  also  by  him  as  impossible) 
in  which  the  container  is  no  addition  to  the  con- 
tained but  identical  with  it,  as  men  are  supposed  to 
be  self-identical  when  they  know  that  they  know. 
Monism,  it  would  appear,  is  but  a  recessional  of  the 
philosophic  problem  which  calls  recession,  solution. 


INTRODUCTION  xxxv 

In  the  end,  it  also  begs  its  datum  and  leaves  it  un- 
explained. Its  effect,  hence,  has  been  that  of  "a 
needless  barrier  to  explanation,"  since  where  it  does 
not  intervene  that  impulsion  of  being  which  we  call 
causation  may  be  discovered  and  acknowledged  im- 
mediately at  hand,  as  "in  the  self-respect  of  some 
great  emotion  or  agonism  that  should  -feel  itself 
worth  while."  But  too  much  reliance  must  not  be 
placed  in  causation  either.  Also  that  is  implicated 
in  self-relation,  with  its  asserton  that  this  is  the 
other,  or  that  the  different  is  the  same,  as  when  we 
say  water  is  hydrogen  and  oxygen.  For  this  and  the 
other  and  different  and  same  are  all  data,  things 
given,  facts,  to  which  "cause"  is  added,  for  the 
assuagement  of  our  unrest  in  their  presence,  as  in- 
ference or  explanation;  and  added,  not  as  increase 
but  as  reduplication  without  increase,  such  redupli- 
cation as  is  supposed  to  take  place  when  you  know 
that  you  know.  Such  reduplication  is  no  more  than 
"self-relation." 

"Self-relation,"  in  Mr.  Blood's  view,  is  the  heart 
and  goal  of  all  philosophy,  its  dialectic  motive  and 
contemplative  illusion.  It  is  the  "foregone  con- 
clusion," the  begged  question  whereof  the  actuality 
and  potency  are  already  assumed  in  its  own  proof. 
Systems  of  philosophy  are  no  more  than  such  proof. 
However  else  they  may  differ,  they  are  alike  involved 
in  the  circular  argument  that,  since  cause  and  effect 
must  be  somehow  identical,  being  has  to  be  its  own 
ground;  that  difference,  therefore,  is  the  same  as 
identity,  negation  as  affirmation:  reality  is  its  own 
other  and  all  relation  is  self-relation.  Whether  you 
think  of  this  relation  as  the  identity  of  knowing  with 


xxxvi  INTRODUCTION 

what  is  known;  or,  after  the  fashion  of  the  theo- 
logians, as  the  identity  of  the  mover  with  the  moved, 
the  causer  with  the  caused ;  or,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  metaphysicians,  as  the  identity  of  past,  present 
and  future  and  the  instantaneity  of  time,  you  do 
not,  by  the  use  of  it,  solve  the  problem  of  being  and  be- 
coming: you  only  delay  and  postpone  it,  you  pass 
the  buck  to  God.  "The  grudge  of  science  as  against 
the  pretense  of  self-relation  is  that  our  highest  claim 
and  achievement,  namely,  knowledge,  is  therein  made 
to  countenance  with  its  full  authority  and  signifi- 
cance a  claim  to  have  attained  the  comprehension 
and  mastery  of  that  which  halts  our  curiosity,  con- 
trols our  interest,  and  occasions  our  discontent,  while 
in  fact  it  does  not  fundamentally  understand  the 
least  and  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  Our  conscious- 
ness, even  as  it  glows,  is  a  helpless  projection  from 
an  alien  energy,  bottomless  in  its  regard,  utterly 
unqualified  to  declare  or  to  determine  anything  as 
necessary,  and  therefore  wholly  incompetent  to  radi- 
cal explanation." 

What,  when  "self-relation"  is  discredited,  is  there 
that  remains  competent  to  "radical  explanation?" 
Nothing.  At  various  instants  in  the  European  tra- 
dition philosophers  have  seized  upon  this  nothing, 
have  made  a  principle  of  it,  and  used  it  as  an  in- 
strument of  explanation.  The  foremost  among 
them  was  Hegel,  who,  resting  his  dialectic  upon  the 
dogma  that  being  and  not  being  are  the  same,  agreed 
that  "the  vitality  of  the  negative  is  essentially  the 
life  of  being  and  that  negation  is  positive  in  its 
results."  Hegel  and  his  kind  have,  however,  been 
merely  deluded  by  the  feeling  that  nothing,  as  a  word, 


INTRODUCTION  xxxvii 

is  something,  and  have  attributed  to  the  discursive 
substantiality  of  the  terra  a  metaphysical  potency 
that  is  merely  fanciful,  like  the  potency  of  any  shib- 
boleth. Sesame,  which  opens  doors  in  the  fairy 
story,  opens  no  doors  in  fact.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  negativity:  non-entity  is  a  thing  purely 
verbal  and  logical,  a  topic  in  dialectic.  What  force 
it  has  accrues  to  it  only  by  reason  of  "its  positive 
given  force,"  as  the  force  of  the  wind  on  the  sail  of 
a  tacking  ship,  whereby  it  goes  in  the  wind's  own 
face.  The  diversification  and  richness  of  existence 
does  not  need  for  its  explanation  the  equilibrium  of 
contradictories,  of  "entity"  and  "non-entity."  "Con- 
trast may  come  as  well  from  new  excess  in  nature 
as  from  the  negation  and  non-being  of  the  passing 
and  the  past."  There  is,  and  there  comes  to  be,  dif- 
ference and  distinction  without  antagonism:  "being 
gets  vital  distinction  in  the  oncoming  future  and 
becomes  itself  the  negative  or  background  in  a  world 
new-born.  .  .  .  There  is  no  struggle  for  mere  being. 
.  .  .  but  rather  the  bounty  of  a  miraculous  becom- 
ing, ever  new,  and  ever  more." 

Does  then,  with  monism  discredited,  idealism 
doubtful,  the  negative  incompetent,  the  world  stretch- 
ing indefinitely  anywhere,  ever  exceeding,  exceeding, 
exceeding,  its  Midst  everywhere,  does  then  duplexity 
dichotomize  existence  into  confusion,  and  is  the  last 
word  of  thought,  agnosco?  Not  for  Mr.  Blood.  If 
analysis  and  dialectic  do  not  reveal  an  organic  and 
absolute  cohesion  of  the  world's  multif  ariousness,  ob- 
servation compels  the  recognition  —  nevertheless  — 
of  a  certain  "ancillary  unity"  of  being,  a  certain 
contact  and  mutual  interplay  or  interpretation  of 


xxxviii  INTRODUCTION 

the  diversity  of  existences.  If  the  universe  is  not  a 
block,  neither  is  it  a  chaos.  There  are  no  absolutes 
in  it:  "contradiction  cannot  utterly  contradict  nor 
can  being  exclusively  be."  The  very  essence  of  "the 
bounty  of  miraculous  becoming"  is  that  everything 
shades  off  into  something  else  with  whose  nature  its 
own  mingles,  as  the  present  mingles  inextricably  with 
the  past  and  future  and  the  then  creeps  up  and  over- 
takes the  now.  "There  is  a  penumbra  which  defeats 
the  exactitude  of  every  assumed  connection,"  and  it 
is  only  in  the  ignoring  of  this  penumbra  that  the 
gratuitous  paradoxes  of  philosophy  arise.  Mr.  Blood 
expands  this  proposition  by  means  of  an  analysis  of 
the  moot-point  of  current  philosophy  —  the  nature 
and  reality  of  motion  and  time.  His  treatment  of 
the  famous  Zenonian  paradox  of  Achilles  and  the 
Tortoise  is  typical.  "Let,"  he  says,  "Achilles  him- 
self propose  the  paradox  that  he  cannot  overtake  the 
tortoise,  and  we  see  at  once  that  to  be  a  philosopher 
he  has  to  be  a  knave;  the  mathematical  requirement 
of  the  feat  is  wholly  impertinent  to  its  empirical 
accomplishment." 

"The  theoretical  puzzle  of  Achilles  is  that  in  the 
punctual  unity  of  each  repeated  effort  he  must 
achieve  the  distance  between  himself  and  the  reptile 
at  the  outset  —  during  which  accomplishment  the 
latter  will  of  course  have  advanced  somewhat:  and 
this  recurring  somewhat,  however  short  its  space, 
renews  the  whole  problem  —  for  Achilles'  next  effort 
is  assumed  to  be  spent  in  the  covering  of  that  space, 
while  the  tortoise  gains  a  new  one,  offering  the  same 
difficulty  in  the  mathematical  impossibility  of  ex- 
hausting a  whole  by  taking  away  successive  frac- 


INTRODUCTION  xxxix 

tions  of  it,  since  the  remainder  will  ever  be  a  whole. 
The  absurdity  of  the  story  appears  in  the  assump- 
tion that  the  athlete  is  intellectually  hobbled,  in  his 
repeated  efforts,  punctually  one  by  one,  so  that  he 
may  not  continue  to  do  his  best  as  in  the  first  en- 
deavor, but  must  waste  a  whole  unit  on  the  little 
space  which  his  rival  has  added  to  the  course;  and 
it  is  this  restraint,  which  in  practice  he  would  never 
dream  of  (and  which  might  be  in  another  country), 
that  encumbers  an  empirical  proposition  with  a  con- 
ceptual impossibility,  uncalled  for  and  impertinent." 
With  the  exposition  of  "ancillary  unity"  Mr. 
Blood's  dialectic  concludes:  We  are  now  on  the 
verge  of  the  anaesthetic  revelation.  Yet  to  make 
the  transition  not  too  abrupt,  he  turns  for  authority 
and  justification  to  the  central  figure  of  the  Chris- 
tian tradition.  He  claims  the  sacredness  of  Jesus  for 
the  side  of  his  secularity.  As  each  one  of  us  carries  an 
ancillary  penumbra  which  sucks  up  and  deindivid- 
ualizes  our  entity,  a  penumbra  shading  into  the 
aliency  of  the  endless  pluriverse,  and  funneling  its 
concentration  through  us,  as  light  through  a  lens,  so 
Jesus  also  carried  the  cosmic  penumbra.  He  also  re- 
pudiated man's  responsibility,  self-sufficiency,  self- 
relation.  Thus  in  the  narrative  regarding  the  woman 
taken  in  adultery  —  "the  pertinence  and  motive  of 
the  legend  can  obtain  only  in  the  divine  purpose  of 
the  gospel  to  relieve  the  human  conscience  of  any 
responsibility  to  the  inspiring  power  whose  behest 
it  powerlessly  fulfils."  Thus,  again,  in  Jesus'  re- 
mark concerning  himself  that  of  himself  he  could  do 
nothing.  No  sum,  no  category  of  human  concep- 
tion is  adequate  to  the  solution  of  the  riddle  of  ex- 


xl  INTRODUCTION 

istence,  to  the  abolition  of  "duplexity":  "freedom, 
originality  and  reason,  as  in  equation  with  the  Mys- 
tery, shall  be  the  last  hopes  of  mortal  explanation." 
And  so  "the  Mystery"  is  upon  us.  It  is  heralded 
with  the  significant  remark :  "our  hope  is  not  so  much 
to  philosophize  the  mystery  as  to  signalize  in  it  an 
unequivocal  impasse  whose  obstruction  can  be  neither 
obviated  nor  defined.  ..."  It  is  the  rock-bottom  of 
reality  whose  uniqueness  is  irreducible  and  whose 
very  recollection  yields  only  a  sense  of  initiation,  of 
"now  you  know."  The  realization  that  comes  to  an 
animal  passing  over  blood  freshly  spilled  on  the 
ground  is  of  its  sort ;  the  animal  is  "arrested  and  en- 
tranced, seemingly  by  some  exhalation  from  the  vital 
fluid."  Of  its  sort  may  be  the  spell  that  holds  a 
calf  to  its  place  in  the  absence  of  its  mother,  or  that 
constrains  a  brooding  hen,  or  that,  at  the  point  of 
death,  is  indicated  in  the  "stare  of  seeming  recog- 
nition, as  of  some  wonderful  import,  just  before 
but  distinctly  not  inclusive  with  the  'setting'  of  the 
eyes."  What  is  found  in  the  revelation  is  "no  static 
unaccountable  equation,  but  rather  a  constant  ex- 
cess, a  going  on  simply  because  it  is  going  on,  in 
which  the  natural  endeavor  to  account  for  itself 
proves  to  be  of  a  piece  with  and  containing  the  same 
stuff  that  it  is  meant  to  account  for.  .  .  .  There 
never  was  a  time  that  did  not  recognize  the  pre- 
sumption of  time  and  the  push  of  its  own  necessity, 
and  also  that  any  question  of  its  motive  was  itself 
a  sufficient  reason  at  once  for  its  continuance  and  its 
precedence,  but  with  no  relation  to  a  beginning." 
What  validates  this  philosophic  commonplace  as 
Mystery  and  as  Revelation  is  "the  immemorial  ata- 


INTRODUCTION  xli 

vism,  the  sense  of  initiation,  the  voice  of  the  blood, 
the  unique  assurance  that  it  is  a  revelation  of  the 
historical  and  the  inevitable  and  the  time  out  of 
mind."  It  may  befall  each  man  differently,  accord- 
ing to  his  nature,  and  no  one  man's  befalling  is  ever 
reducible  to  another's.  If  it  be  unique  for  each,  it 
is  so  because  it  shows  him  the  commonplace  secular 
stretch  of  time  where  his  own  being  is  but  the  instant 
firing-point  of  an  advancing  line.  All  this  through 
anaesthesia,  the  right  psychology  of  whose  remission 
is  stated,  in  Mr.  Blood's  judgment,  by  Xenos  Clark: 
"It  is  the  one  sole  and  sufficient  insight  why  (or 
not  why,  but  how)  the  present  is  pushed  on  by  the 
past,  and  sucked  forward  by  the  vacuity  of  the  fu- 
ture. Its  inevitableness  defeats  all  attempts  at  stop- 
ping or  accounting  for  it.  It  is  all  precedence  and 
presupposition,  and  questioning  is  in  regard  to  it 
forever  too  late.  It  is  an  initiation  of  the  past. 
The  real  secret  would  be  the  formula  by  which  the 
'now'  keeps  exfoliating  out  of  itself,  yet  never  es- 
capes. What  is  it,  indeed,  that  keeps  existence  ex- 
foliating? The  formal  being  of  anything,  the  logi- 
cal definition  of  it,  is  static.  For  mere  logic  every 
question  contains  its  own  answer  —  we  simply  fill 
the  hole  with  the  dirt  we  dug  out.  Why  are  twice 
two  four?  Because,  in  fact,  four  is  twice  two.  Thus 
logic  finds  in  life  no  propulsion,  only  a  momentum. 
It  goes  because  it  is  a-going.  But  the  revelation 
adds:  it  goes  because  it  is  and  was  a-going.  You 
walk,  as  it  were,  round  yourself  in  the  revelation. 
Ordinary  philosophy  is  like  a  hound  hunting  his 
own  trail.  The  more  he  hunts  the  farther  he  has  to 
go,  and  his  nose  never  catches  up  with  his  heels,  be- 


xlii  INTRODUCTION 

cause  it  is  forever  ahead  of  them.  So  the  present 
is  already  a  foregone  conclusion,  and  I  am  ever  too 
late  to  understand  it.  But  at  the  moment  of  recov- 
ery from  anaesthesis,  just  then,  before  starting  on 
life,  I  catch,  so  to  speak,  a  glimpse  of  my  heels,  a 
glimpse  of  the  eternal  process  just  in  the  act  of 
starting.  The  truth  is  that  we  travel  on  a  journey 
that  was  accomplished  before  we  set  out;  and  the 
real  end  of  philosophy  is  accomplished,  not  when  we 
arrive  at,  but  when  we  remain  in,  our  destination 
(being  already  there) — which  may  occur  vicari- 
ously in  this  life  when  we  cease  our  intellectual  ques- 
tioning. That  is  why  there  is  a  smile  upon  the  face 
of  the  revelation,  as  we  view  it.  It  tells  us  that  we 
are  forever  half  a  second  too  late  —  that's  all.  'You 
could  kiss  your  own  lips,  and  have  all  the  fun  to  your- 
self,' it  says,  'if  you  only  knew  the  trick.  It  would 
be  perfectly  easy  if  they  would  just  stay  there  till 
you  got  round  to  them.' 

"The  Anaesthetic  Revelation  is  the  Initiation  of 
Man  into  the  Immemorial  Mystery  of  the  Open  Se- 
cret of  Being,  revealed  as  the  Inevitable  Vortex  of 
Continuity.  Inevitable  is  the  word.  Its  motive  is 
inherent  —  it  is  what  has  to  be.  It  is  not  for  any 
love  or  hate,  nor  for  joy  nor  sorrow,  nor  good  nor 
ill.  End,  beginning,  or  purpose,  it  knows  not  of. 

"It  affords  no  particular  of  the  multiplicity  and 
variety  of  things;  but  it  fills  appreciation  of  the 
historical  and  the  sacred  with  a  secular  and  inti- 
mately personal  illumination  of  the  nature  and  mo- 
tive of  existence,  which  then  seems  reminiscent  —  as 
if  it  should  have  appeared,  or  shall  yet  appear,  to 
every  participant  thereof. 


INTRODUCTION  xliii 

"Although  it  is  at  first  startling  in  its  solemnity, 
it  becomes  directly  such  a  matter  of  course  —  so  old- 
fashioned,  and  so  akin  to  proverbs,  that  it  inspires 
exultation  rather  than  fear,  and  a  sense  of  safety, 
as  identified  with  the  aboriginal  and  the  universal. 
But  no  words  may  express  the  imposing  certainty 
of  the  patient  that  he  is  realizing  the  primordial, 
Adamic  surprise  of  Life. 

"Repetition  of  the  experience  finds  it  ever  the  same, 
and  as  if  it  could  not  possibly  be  otherwise.  The 
subject  resumes  his  normal  consciousness  only  to 
partially  and  fitfully  remember  its  occurrence,  and 
to  try  to  formulate  its  baffling  import,  with  only  this 
consolatory  afterthought:  that  he  has  known  the 
oldest  truth,  and  that  he  has  done  with  human  the- 
ories as  to  the  origin,  meaning,  or  destiny  of  the  race. 
He  is  beyond  instruction  in  'spiritual  things.' ' 

And  so  end  philosophy  and  its  perplexities  and  its 
contradictory  solutions  that  do  not  solve.  The  Rev- 
elation itself  is,  according  to  Mr.  Blood,  not  a  solu- 
tion either.  It  is  a  satisfaction.  It  is  a  satisfaction 
because  it  shows  that  what  seems  to  be  really  is,  that 
the  question  is  the  answering,  that  the  answer  is  the 
questioning  itself. 

To  many,  what  is  attained  here  must  seem  no  more 
than  the  blind  autonomy  and  na'ive  acquiescence  in 
which  consists  the  consciousness  of  the  beasts  of  the 
field.  This  needs  no  denial.  It  is  the  manner  of  the 
attainment  that  counts,  that  must  be  added  to  the 
goal,  and  that  being  added  alters  its  nature  and  sig- 
nificance. The  beasts  of  the  field  are  not  mystics 
and  men  who  become  mystics  do  so  only  by  the  force 
of  the  philosophy  with  which  they  justify  their  be- 


xliv  INTRODUCTION 

coming.  It  is  in  this  addition,  in  this  power  of  dia- 
lectic circling  that  our  manhood  resides.  The  vindi- 
cation through  philosophic  questioning  of  undoubting 
consciousness  of  the  beast  is  the  victorious  self-pres- 
ervation of  the  doubting  consciousness  of  man. 

H.  M.  KALLEN. 


CHAPTER  I 
DUPLEXITY 

SECTION     FIEST 

The  Critical  and  the  Dogmatic 

PHILOSOPHY,  as  the  science  of  explanation, 
naturally  assumes  the  coincidence  of  the  pos- 
sible and  the  rational,  and  as  well  of  the 
rational  and  the  logical.  But  experience  rudely 
jostles  this  amicable  adjustment.  The  human  finite, 
as  a  local  and  ephemeral  parasite,  finds  his  prime 
concernment  in  causes  and  beginnings  and  ends,  while 
the  stable  cosmos  can  afford  only  vibrations  and 
compensations.  To  Sufficient  Intelligence  all  things 
always  are ;  only  in  a  nightmare  could  it  dream  of  a 
radical  beginning  or  an  utterly  ceasing.  And  as 
for  logic  and  expression,  these  can  claim  only  as 
imitation  or  re-presentation,  which  at  best  may  at- 
tain similitude,  while  "truth"  is  what  likeness  ex- 
plicitly lacks,  and  what  identity  only  could  supply. 

Reality  itself,  in  and  as  knowledge,  would  have  no 
essential  being.  Knowing  is  not  being  —  not  "thing 
in  itself"  —  unless,  always,  knowledge  is  self-known. 
It  is  a  fair  conjecture  that  finite  rationality  is  not 
consistent  with  cosmic  conditions,  and  may  factually 
be  called  upon  to  tolerate  the  rationally  impossible. 

1 


2  PLURIVERSE 

Philosophy  proposes  a  weird  partnership  or  equa- 
tion between  man  and  the  world,  as  subject  and  ob- 
ject, and  these  two  prove  strangely  convertible  and 
interwoven.  That  the  transient  subject,  for  all  his 
legends  of  rainbow  "covenants"  and  conversations 
face  to  face,  "as  of  a  man  with  his  friend,"  should 
fail  as  a  divine  correspondent,  is  not  surprising. 

Yet  duplexity  is  the  main  parenthesis  of  philos- 
ophy, signalizing  a  more  or  less  explicit  duality,  a 
kind  of  sex,  suggestive  of  attrition  and  process  and 
result,  with  their  thousand  proverbs  of  reaction  and 
compensation,  even  of  strife  as  the  father  of  things. 
Duality  is  especially  the  fated  nature  of  conscious- 
ness, but  whether  instantly  such  in  itself,  or  by  a 
process  of  shifting  viewpoints,  making  the  wonder  of 
a  self  to  itself,  is  one  of  the  most  annoying  and  per- 
sistent problems  of  philosophy.  A  rational  unity 
would  require  an  intelligence  that  is  such  as  an 
object  or  topic  to  itself;  it  should  comprehend  and 
include  itself,  even  in  the  contradiction  that  the  other 
is  the  same.  But  then,  what  is  the  use  of  contradic- 
tion? 

We  must  call  upon  Emerson  here : 

"It  is  all  idle,  talking.  Life  is  made  up  of  the  in- 
termixture and  reaction  of  two  amicable  powers 
whose  marriage  appears  beforehand  monstrous,  as 
each  denies  and  tends  to  abolish  the  other.  We  must 
reconcile  the  contradictions  as  we  can,  but  their  dis- 
cord and  concord  introduce  wild  absurdities  into  our 
thinking  and  speech.  No  sentence  will  hold  the  whole 
truth,  and  the  only  way  we  can  be  just  is  by  giving 
ourselves  the  lie:  Speech  is  better  than  silence  — 
silence  is  better  than  speech  —  things  are  and  are 


DUPLEXITY  3 

not  at  the  same  time  —  and  the  like.  All  the  uni- 
verse over  there  is  but  one  thing,  this  old  Two-Face, 
creator-creature,  right-wrong,  of  which  any  propo- 
sition may  be  affirmed  or  denied." 

To  a  man  on  the  street  (if  one  could  be  supposed 
to  stop  and  listen  to  it)  this  diatribe,  seeming  to  dis- 
countenance all  literary  expression,  even  as  confes- 
sion, were  but  rigmarole  or  absurdity,  possible  un- 
der poetic  license ;  but  so  far  from  all  this,  it  has  to 
be  recognized  as  the  basis  of  all  responsible  criti- 
cism. 

From  this  classic  substratum  rose  the  reluctant 
confession  of  Kant:  "It  is  sad  and  doubtless  pro- 
voking, that  reason,  the  only  tribune  for  all  con- 
flicts, should  be  in  conflict  with  herself." 

We  read  in  Schwegler  also:  "Only  in  the  last  of 
days  can  history  account  itself  a  work  of  reason." 

Herr  Eucken  exclaims :  "Scarcely  anything  re- 
pels so  much  as  the  impertinence  of  representing  the 
world  as  it  is  as  a  realm  of  reason."  And  for  this 
he  is  awarded  the  Nobel  prize. 

It  makes  good  reading  too  in  the  Hibbert  Journal 
(July  1910)  :  "There  is  no  complete  generalization, 
no  total  point  of  view,  no  all-pervasive  unity.  .  .  . 
There  is  no  conclusion  —  what  has  concluded,  that 
we  might  conclude  in  regard  to  it?  .  .  .  The  mys- 
tery remains  as  somewhat  to  be  dealt  with  by  facul- 
ties more  akin  to  our  activities  and  heroisms  than  to 
our  logical  powers." 

In  his  exhaustive  study  of  "Parmenides"  Plato 
seems  to  have  driven  human  rationality  entirely  from 
the  field  of  explanation:  "Whether  one  is  or  is  not, 
one  and  the  others  in  relation  to  themselves  and  one 


4  PLURIVERSE 

another,  all  of  them,  in  every  way,  are  and  are  not, 
and  appear  and  appear  not." 

Popular  civilization  gets  a  call-down  here.  How 
has  it  responded  to  this  esoteric  arraignment  of  its 
power  of  expression  and  conception,  in  presence  of 
the  old  Two-Face  "of  which  any  proposition  may  be 
affirmed  or  denied?"  And  either  way  under  the  han- 
dicap that  no  one  sentence  will  hold  the  whole  truth ! 
Think  of  the  numberless  writers  and  teachers  and 
preachers,  with  very  liberal  salaries  and  considerable 
reputations,  taking  themselves  quite  seriously:  how 
has  been  condoned  or  compromised  the  inconsistency 
of  their  pretensions  with  possibility  and  rationality 
radically  dissociated?  Under  what  apologies  or 
exceptions  do  the  universities  assume  to  have  ac- 
complished their  thousands  of  graduates? 

We  should  have  expected  in  such  an  imbroglio  that 
some  determined  spirit  would  long  ago  have  come  to 
the  front  with  either  a  clarion  denunciation  of  phil- 
osophy as  the  headline  of  the  intellectual  program, 
or  with  some  tour  de  force  in  "method"  wherein  an 
expert  might  succeed  in  expression,  even  under  the 
handicap  that  his  opponent  on  his  own  ground  might 
be  as  knowing  as  himself,  with  an  equal  standing  in 
court.  Why  not  a  "commission"  on  the  subject? 

So  far  from  any  such  ingenious  eclair cissement 
appearing  in  the  record,  the  position  is  stalled  and 
camouflaged  in  a  myopic  pretence  that  there  is 
nothing  to  be  concealed  —  or  if  there  is  any  inex- 
plicable complication  in  the  premises,  it  shall  re- 
dound the  more  to  the  glory  of  God,  with  whom  all 
things  are  possible.  "Metaphysics"  gets  but  a  sinis- 
ter shrug.  "Religion  out  of  church  is  sacrilege": 


DUPLEXITY  5 

it  is  bad  form,  such  as  would  be  discussion  of  the 
sacred  privacies  of  the  family  physician.  But  in 
the  church,  safe  from  the  free  lances  of  the  club  and 
the  clinic,  rank  exhorters  who  know  little  of  the 
idealism  that  alone  might  tolerate  their  pretensions, 
speak  as  familiarly  of  God  as  Master  Shallow  spoke 
of  John  of  Gaunt :  "he  might  have  been  born  brother 
to  him." 

It  is  fairly  up  to  criticism  and  book-reviewing  and 
reputation-making  to  adjudicate  this  challenge  of 
reason  by  reason.  Is  the  problem  of  true  thought 
and  expression  —  the  classic  "truth"  —  so  obdurate 
as  the  professional  thinkers  have  left  it  ?  Literature 
as  well  as  metaphysics  shall  find  its  prestige  at  stake 
upon  the  question,  whether  this  of  Eucken  is  really 
the  last  word  of  truth  —  "the  difficulty,  indeed,  the 
impossibility  of  its.  appropriate  representation  in 
thought  and  conception!" 

Experts  find  it  easy  enough,  however  idle  or  incon- 
sequent, flirting  between  equivalent  viewpoints  — 
ideal  and  real,  static  and  dynamic,  and  dogmatically 
setting  up  half-truths  which,  when  depended  upon, 
directly  topple  over  in  their  own  partiality.  Society 
has  helplessly  consented  that  certain  oppositions 
shall  be  ignored.  We  cloak  over  our  inconvenient 
discoveries  and  suspicions.  The  astronomer  speaks 
of  the  "sunrise"  quite  childlike  and  bland;  and  the 
profoundest  idealist  constantly  confesses  to  the  in- 
tegrity of  matter.  A  rap  on  the  head  gives  a  con- 
viction of  reality  that  no  idea  can  come  forth  of  it 
and  refute.  Criticism  of  the  common  sense  comes 
back  in  its  own  face ;  like  the  wasp  and  the  hornet,  it 
leaves  its  sting  in  the  wound,  and  is  fatal  to  itself. 


6  PLURIVERSE 

For  there  does  seem  to  be  in  the  world,  and  more 
or  less  as  the  world,  an  essential  opposition,  which 
throws  truth  into  contradiction.  And  the  opposi- 
tion is  elemental,  integral,  punitive,  entitling  vitally 
opposing  viewpoints,  and  encouraging  antagonistic 
creeds.  Down  upon  the  practical  field  it  entails  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  In  metaphysics  we  see  being 
and  not-being  insisting  upon  and  pervading  each 
other.  We  read  of  "negation  positive  in  its  result." 

Such  is  really  the  genius  of  being,  such  the  burden 
of  philosophy.  If  possibility  will  stand  for  essential 
opposition  it  must  stand  for  logical  contradiction ; 
there  must  be  contrary  knowledges  at  the  same  in- 
tegral point.  But  opposing  knowledges  (not  mere 
opinions)  at  the  same  point  are  null  except  upon  one 
condition:  the  reality  shall  not  be  objectively  de- 
termined, not  a  thing  in  itself,  but  rather  what  it  is 
known  as,  the  subjects  themselves  furnishing  any  ap- 
parent difference.  But  these  knowledges  may  be 
good  and  sufficient  for  their  subjects  —  half-truths 
perhaps,  but  wholes  to  half-natures.  A  man  may 
stake  life  and  soul  that  the  sun  goes  around  the 
earth;  "to  whom  a  thing  appears  that  thing  is," 
said  the  ancient ;  but  for  this  to  be  true  and  not  an 
illusion  of  sense  reality  must  be  subjectively  deter- 
mined, and  not  an  alien  thing  in  itself. 

Reality  by  right  should  be  essentially,  or  in  and 
of  itself;  but  for  philosophy,  which  is  a  kind  of  im- 
pertinence, it  can  be  only  what  it  is  known  as.  In 
truth  being  and  essence  should  be  identical,  but  in 
philosophy  they  are  merely  the  same,  and  dialectically 
the  same  is  another  (there  needs  two  for  sameness). 
Though  it  were  a  re-presentation  it  were  not  truly 


DUPLEXITY  7 

the  same  though  similar,  or  at  best  a  likeness,  and 
"truth"  is  explicitly  what  likeness  lacks :  pure  being, 
rightly  same  in  its  identity,  without  limit  or  distinc- 
tion, for  philosophy  becomes  "one"  —  a  being  of 
limit  and  comprehension ;  and  when  philosophy  would 
comprehend  its  all  as  one  it  has  to  negotiate  the 
anomaly  of  somewhat  limiting  and  comprehending 
itself.  For,  as  said  Philolaus,  "one  is  made  by  lim- 
iting," and  if  all  is  one  or  a  whole  it  is  such  by  the 
limiting  and  comprehension  of  itself.  The  whole  has 
no  environment  or  room  containing  it :  these  if  neces- 
sary shall  be  in  the  whole's  own  essence;  and  hence 
its  comprehension  is  from  within,  spiritual,  as  of 
an  ego  or  personal  intelligence. 

In  taking  the  world  as  a  problem  philosophy  neces- 
sarily raises  the  question,  whether  reality  is  objec- 
tively essential  —  a  thing  in  itself  —  or  merely  what 
it  is  known  as ;  and  this  again  becomes  under  criti- 
cism a  double  question.  Knowledge  itself  will  in 
turn  be  called  upon  as  to  whether  it  is  authentically 
such,  or  only  what  it  can  be  critically  proved  —  pos- 
sibly only  secondary  and  given. 

For  idealism  reality  has  no  objective  integrity;  or 
if  at  best  it  has  position  the  same  is  questionable  and 
indifferent.  For  pure  philosophy  the  world  must  be 
what  it  is  known  as ;  and  if  knowledge  itself  is  in 
question  it  must  be  self-determined. 

That  reality  is  identical  for  only  what  it  is  known 
as,  consider  the  matter  of  its  different  sizes. 

All  sane  human  beings  are  agreed  as  to  the  ap- 
parent sizes  of  different  things  as  something  genuine 
and  reliable;  the  world  (we  assume)  is  real  as  in  and 
of  these  sizes.  But  when  we  subject  an  object  to 


8  PLURIVERSE 

the  microscope  and  enlarge  its  size  many  times,  and 
find  potentially  in  it  beautiful  features,  and  per- 
chance living  creatures  for  which  the  unaided  eye 
is  inadequate,  we  learn  that  in  true  aesthetic  value  our 
sizes  are  but  arbitrary  and  accidental  determinations 
of  our  own  lenses,  and  that  the  world  may  have  as 
many  sizes  as  it  has  observers,  and  that  it  is  identical 
only  as  position  in  some  occult  order  of  being,  with 
no  size  at  all  of  its  own,  in  fact  that  all  things  in 
themselves  (if  there  are  such)  are  the  same. 

For  instance  we  may  say  categorically  that  light 
and  darkness  are  the  same.  Every  one  knows  the 
sense  in  which  they  are  different,  but  he  may  need  to 
be  advised  of  a  vital  sense  in  which  they  are  alike, 
to  wit,  that  neither  is  essential,  or  anything  at 
all  in  itself  —  and  further  that  there  may  be  no 
reality  in  itself,  but  specifically  only  what  it  is 
known  as. 

As  for  light  and  darkness,  we  know  that  if  all  the 
light  should  go  out  there  would  be  left  no  distinc- 
tion —  no  form  nor  line  nor  shade  of  difference. 
But  consider:  if  all  the  darkness  should  go  out,  the 
pure  light  would  be  equally  void  of  any  line  or  form 
or  difference.  It  should  appear  then  that  neither 
light  nor  darkness  essentially  affords  distinction,  nor 
one  more  than  the  other,  but  that  distinction  in  it- 
self is  a  property  of  intelligence.  The  difference  of 
two  things  is  not  a  property  of  either. 

In  practical  life  we  easily  condone  our  opposing 
viewpoints.  We  assume  a  duplex  consciousness  of 
the  sun  going  around  the  earth  and  the  earth  going 
around  the  sun;  we  allow  them  to  mingle  their  mo- 
tions, 


DUPLEXITY  9 

Forever  singing  as  they  shine: 

"  The  hand  that  made  us  is  divine." 

But  we  are  not  quite  so  ready  in  accepting  as  half- 
truths  universe  and  pluriverse,  or  theism  and 
atheism,  as  they  arise  in  the  consideration  of  space 
as  either  going  on-and-on  beyond  comprehension, 
unity  or  personality,  or  as  being  in  itself  nothing, 
save  by  the  voluntary  occupying  of  subjective  spirit. 
Concurring  freely  with  Herr  Eucken  as  to  the  imper- 
tinent presumption  of  the  finite  in  assuming  that  the 
cosmos,  to  be  at  all,  must  be  rational,  or  consistent 
with  its  parasitical  nature,  and  agreeing  generally 
that  the  rational  and  the  possible  are  not  necessarily 
coincident,  we  regard  it  as  no  heroic  undertaking, 
holding  theism  and  atheism  as  half-truths  equally 
defensible. 

Said  Novalis :  "Philosophy  can  bake  no  bread,  but 
she  can  give  us  God,  freedom  and  immortality." 

By  baking  no  bread  he  doubtless  alluded  to  our 
utter  ignorance  of  any  natural  law,  the  fact  being 
that  we  know  nothing  of  natural  causes  or  elements ; 
but  for  idealism  (which  was  his  only  intention  as 
philosophy)  the  world  is  not  an  alien  imposition  upon 
consciousness, but  rather  is  determined  by  (or  through) 
consciousness;  and  the  seeming  extensity  of  space 
is  a  mirage  of  spiritual  liberty  —  the  room  and  pos- 
sibility of  the  spirit's  action,  and  nothing  at  all  in 
itself,  nothing  "out  there." 

The  advantage  of  this  absorption  of  space  is  to 
the  spirit's  unity  and  comprehension.  Philosophy 
as  explanation  requiring  a  being  that  is  sufficient 
in  itself,  and  unity  or  one  being  due  to  limitation  and 


10  PLURIVERSE 

comprehension,  the  vagary  of  a  mere  space-compre- 
hension, a  one  in  an  unlimited  other,  would  not  be  the 
one  of  all  that  supremacy  and  safety  require.  The 
one  must  furnish  or  contain  its  own  limit,  and  phil- 
osophy as  idealism  proposes  this  in  the  self-knowing, 
self-limiting  and  every  way  self-determining  (they 
would  say  self-creating  if  they  dared)  of  the  one. 

(For  scientific  purposes  it  is  better  to  understand 
here  by  the  popular  words,  God,  freedom  and  im- 
mortality, the  plainer  meanings  of  unity,  sponta- 
neity and  safety.) 

All  turns  here  upon  the  notion  of  space  —  whether 
it  is  concrete  objective  extensity,  or  else  the  spirit's 
reflection  of  its  own  capacity  and  freedom  of  achieve- 
ment, in  a  world  where  things  are  not  alien  and  inte- 
gral in  themselves,  but  are  what  they  are  known  as, 
determined  by  or  through  the  lenses  and  forms  of 
personal  organization. 

If  space  is  physical  extensity  —  out  there,  a  con- 
crete terrain  whether  it  be  occupied  or  empty, 
going  on  and  on  with  nothing  to  stop  it  —  then 
there  is  no  more  to  be  said  of  unity  or  comprehen- 
sion, no  more  of  "all"  or  "the  whole."  Pluriverse 
is  the  word,  the  everywhere  as  here,  the  democracy 
of  the  many,  the  impossibility  of  autocracy  or 
supremacy  or  general  personality. 

(There  needs  care  here  to  avoid  the  whim  of  "the 
infinite."  We  vacantly  see  space  going  on,  and  let 
it  go  at  that:  "infinite,"  because  we  neglect  the 
finishing  and  carrying  out  of  the  thought  of  it. 
But  it  makes  a  radical  difference  in  theology  whether 
our  outlook  is  mere  indifference  and  negligence  or 
a  concrete  continuum  beyond  comprehension.  If 


DUPLEXITY  11 

the  spirit  determines  its  own  space  and  unity  and 
comprehension  [as  self-consciousness  is  supposed  to 
demonstrate]  then  there  is  a  possibility  of  God,  free- 
dom and  immortality,  self-centred  and  safe  from 
any  dangerous  environment.) 

Obviously  there  are  here  two  ostensible  viewpoints 
from  which  to  rationalize  a  no  less  formidable  opposi- 
tion than  that  of  theism  and  atheism.  To  the 
average  culture  pluriverse  is  inevitable;  space  goes 
on  and  on,  and  there  is  no  comprehension  nor  limit 
nor  unity,  and  no  whole  save  the  solipsist's  whim  of 
another  than  himself.  But  against  this  rises  the 
world  of  idealism,  which  from  its  viewpoint  cannot 
be  disqualified. 

The  seemingly  necessary  and  logical  going  on  of 
space  can  be  countered  by  an  equally  fated  necessity 
of  intelligence  itself,  whereby  thought  has  a  centri- 
petal and  self-relating  tendency,  a  transcending  ex- 
cess of  its  own  essence  as  knowledge  in  and  of  itself 
(possible  if  not  rational)  whereby  it  may  constantly 
revert  from  the  true  tangent  of  extensity  to  the 
down-curving  water-level  of  the  planet-born,  and 
prove  the  space  which  is  conceived  of  as  outward  ex- 
tension to  be  the  freedom  of  its  own  will  to  extend, 
and  that  its  limit  and  its  wholeness  are  its  own  prop- 
erty —  not  framed  or  stayed  by  otherness,  but  essen- 
tial as  self-related. 

Of  course  we  of  the  scientific  world  know  how  this 
trick  of  orbicular  intelligence  is  played  upon  us  in 
the  water-level,  and  we  know  that  while  in  our 
logic  nothing  can  be  related  to  itself,  yet  we  do 
constantly  entertain  the  conceit  of  knowing  our- 
selves without  definite  objectification,  and  of  having 


12  PLURIVERSE 

an  independent  autonomous  spontaneity  of  power  — 
such  as  someone  or  something  somewhere  or  somehow 
should  afford  for  explanation.  And  as  for  our  so 
confident  assurance  that  space  goes  on  and  on 
whether  occupied  or  not,  let  us  see  by  an  easy  psy- 
chological experiment  how  Novalis  would  prove  that 
philosophy  can  "give  us  God,  freedom  and  immortal- 
ity." 

He  has  but  to  show  that  space-extensity  is  men- 
tal, and  then  all  the  objective  world  will  respond  to 
the  subjective  spirit,  and  dwell  in  the  sphericity  of 
a  freedom  in  which  it  may  advance  equally  and  in- 
finitely in  any  direction  —  a  universe  founded  from 
within,  not  prescribed  or  framed  by  otherness,  but 
having  in  itself  essentially  the  otherness  wherein 
reason  or  fancy  would  produce  or  sustain  existence. 

Let  the  experimenter  then  resolutely  set  forth  to 
walk  off  the  planet  into  space  and  prove  its  endless 
outward  extensity  an  objective  reality. 

We  should  foresee  that  in  achieving  this  field  or 
route  our  protagonist  as  an  ingenious  spirit  will,  as 
we  might  say,  have  one  eye  upon  himself ;  and  while, 
on  his  passage,  he  will  at  first  measure  this  achieve- 
ment by  the  bounds  and  barriers  which  he  passes, 
he  will  also  credit  himself  with  the  exertion  that  he 
puts  forth ;  and  in  this  regard  he  might  well  perceive 
that  a  blind  man  on  a  treadmill  would  be  covering 
space  at  the  same  rate,  and  to  the  same  extent.  In 
the  outer  field  of  the  empyrean  our  experimenter's 
eyes  will  be  useless  as  to  his  advance;  there  will  be 
no  guideboards  to  pass,  and  he  will  be  ready  to  con- 
fess that  space  so  demonstrated  or  accomplished  is 
literally  nothing,  and  that  the  only  considerable 


DUPLEXITY  13 

thing  or  fact  to  be  objectified  in  the  premises  is  his 
own  liberty  of  action,  which  he  has  been  erroneously 
construing  as  an  atmosphere  in  which  he  lived. 

As  an  intellectual  problem,  this  proving  space  by 
units  of  outer  exertion  is  the  same  as  would  be  the 
proving  of  possibility  by  inward  steps  of  the  infinite 
divisibility  of  number.  Our  traveller  (  for  the  higher 
thought)  is  only  marking  time,  and  proving  that 
space  is  his  own  freedom,  while  for  the  lower  or  prag- 
matic thought  he  is  pursuing  the  water-level  of  the 
planet-born,  and  like  the  compass-foot  that  is  ever 
returning  while  advancing,  he  will  but  identify  his 
position  by  process,  and  prove  that  "unit  and  uni- 
verse are  round." 

Nevertheless,  over  against  this  demonstration  of 
orbicular  intelligence,  the  pluriversal  continuum 
stands  immovably  transcendent  of  all  unity,  compre- 
hension or  personality,  and  in  the  name  of  science 
protests  that  only  the  boor  and  the  bigot  bow  to  the 
rising  sun. 

Science  can  have  no  quarrel  with  Novalis  for  re- 
calling space  into  himself,  for  we  shall  find  under 
"Idealism"  that  all  our  world  is  a  deposition  of  con- 
sciousness ;  but  what  we  claim  for  duplexity  is  that 
the  reverse  of  his  doctrine  is  an  equally  plausible 
argument  from  grounds  whose  reality  is  as  invincibly 
real  as  his  own.  We  are  not  taking  a  side,  but 
rather  claiming  that  philosophy  has  been  an  in- 
consequent excursion.  Our  exclamation,  Pluriverse, 
is  here  preferred  to  Universe  only  as  emphasizing 
the  clumsiness  of  those  who  live  constantly  in  the 
dream  of  Novalis  with  no  scintil  of  the  idealism 
without  which  it  is  crudely  irrational. 


14  PLURIVERSE 

It  is  peremptorily  obvious  to  the  modern  man, 
whom  the  astronomers  have  driven  to  the  Coperni- 
can  viewpoint,  that  facts  as  sure  as  the  rising  of  the 
sun  have  to  pass  as  illusions  in  order  to  give  sanity 
and  "sense"  to  doctrines  that  have  grown  out  of 
unquestionable  accuracy  of  thinking,  which  none  the 
less  stands  loyally  by  the  old  ideas  from  the  old 
viewpoints,  which  can  be  neither  ignored  nor  super- 
seded. The  best  form  will  not  necessarily  take  a 
side  in  the  theistic  controversy.  When  the  insist- 
ent dogmatist  puts  his  question,  "Is  not  one  or  the 
other  of  these  propositions  absolutely  and  exclusively 
true?"  the  best  culture  can  but  smiling  put  the 
question  by,  or  like  Socrates  refer  it  to  the  profes- 
sional experts. 

Surely  whatever  is  to  be  admitted  in  our  world 
of  thought  should  be  expressible  in  words ;  we  do  no 
consecutive  thinking  otherwise  than  in  conventional 
terms;  but  we  are  to  consider  that  language  is  an 
invention  slowly  produced,  and  our  philosophy  in- 
fers the  morning  of  the  times.  So  far  it  is  an  in- 
consequent excursion  in  the  hope  of  comprehension. 

It  is  confessedly  a  strenuous  and  thankless  role 
of  thinking  assuming  the  equivalence  of  opposing 
hypotheses  in  the  same  premises,  and  allowing  a 
fighting  chance  to  half-truths  while  denying  any 
unity  of  generalization.  Consistently  we  could 
never  speak  at  all  in  the  presence  of  the  old  "Two- 
Face,"  under  whose  countenance  "any  proposition 
may  be  affirmed  or  denied";  but  convention  has  po- 
litely shelved  these  ultimate  questions  in  the  pre- 
sumptive interest  of  religion,  and  before  advancing 


DUPLEXITY  15 

to  scientific  idealism  we  shall  speak  more  popularly 
of  duplexity,  less  as  of  the  critical  and  the  dog- 
matic, and  more  as  of  the  static  and  the  dynamic. 

SECTION    SECOND 

Static  and  Dynamic  Relations 
Only  confusion  can  result  from  the  exploitation 
of  any  philosophical  topic  without  a  previous  appre- 
ciation of  the  ineluctable  duplexity  which  involves 
all  thought  and  things,  and  which  primarily  and 
most  portentously  divides  the  field  of  speculation 
into  time  and  eternity;  demanding  two  opposing 
viewpoints,  to  be  severally  characterized  as  the 
static  and  the  dynamic,  equally  defensible.1 

From  the  static  viewpoint  all  things  always  are. 
For  sufficient  reason  nothing  could  newly  become; 
for  becoming  is  in  a  time  process,  and  in  it  the  identi- 
cal might  only  partly  be,  except  under  the  startling 
concession  of  a  reality  both  being  and  not  being  in 
the  same  instant,  congenitally  splitting  the  tongue 
of  truth. 

We  may  notice  here,  and  perhaps  as  fitly  as  if 
anywhere  else,  that  in  the  matter  of  a  complete  be- 
ing between  the  past  and  the  future  (neither  of 
which  presently  is),  or  of  complete  being  as  embrac- 
ing being  and  not-being  in  contradiction,  the  under- 
standing of  Hegelism  is  that  the  truth  of  the  abso- 
lute fact  is  process,  or  transcendental  nature,  in 
which  being  and  not-being  (logically  apprehended) 
are  moments,  or  mental  elements.  These,  in  the 
Hegelian  exposition  of  the  topic,  appear  and  dis- 
appear in  a  tergiversation  between  the  static  and 
i  See  Chapter  IX. 


16  PLURIVERSE 

dynamic  viewpoints,  either  of  which  may  be  dog- 
matically defended  —  although  they  can  be  recon- 
ciled only  in  a  confessed  contradiction  —  by  unify- 
ing identity  and  difference,  and  by  claiming 
as  (logically)  instant  a  self-relation  confessedly 
achieved  by  a  lapsing  process  of  the  "in-itself"  to 
the  "for-itself."  His  dexterity  in  this  tergiversa- 
tion is  "the  secret  of  Hegel." 

We  may  as  well  here  notice  especially  the  duplex 
nature  of  man. 

Note  firstly  in  his  make-up  the  primeval  equa- 
tion of  substance  and  form,  or  extension  and  thought, 
as  he  stands  visible  and  invisible,  apprehensible  only 
by  the  joint  faculties  of  sensation  and  reflection,  of 
sense  and  spirit.  Next  see  him  double  and  opposed 
as  male  and  female ;  and  curious  science  has  gone  so 
far  as  to  detect  in  either  of  these  orders  a  rudiment- 
ary incipience  of  the  other  —  as  if,  were  one  sex 
destroyed,  the  other  might  project  the  lost  one  from 
itself.  Note  further  the  duplexity  of  his  two  sides, 
right  and  left.  From  head  to  foot  he  seems  put 
together  as  two  variously  independent  parts,  each 
with  its  leg  and  arm,  and  eye  and  ear,  and  its  side 
of  the  organs  of  taste  and  smell  —  each  with  its  half 
of  the  brain,  the  lungs,  kidneys  and  heart ;  each  with 
its  system  of  nerves  and  vessels ;  and  one  of  these  sides 
may  be  at  least  partially  paralyzed  while  the  other 
is  working  comparatively  well. 

More  intimately  observe  how  each  of  the  sides  in 
turn  is  double  in  the  method  of  its  construction,  in 
that  it  is  throughout  tubular  —  hollow  and  filled, 
container  and  content ;  the  binding  web,  of  which  we 
might  say,  it  is  the  man  proper,  is  filled  with  blood 


DUPLEXITY  17 

and  juices  and  food  increment,  formally  accessory; 
the  food  and  the  juices  inhabit  their  proper  chan- 
nels, and  with  regard  to  the  integral  man  may  be 
said  to  enter  the  form  but  not  the  substance:  like 
a  knife  stabbed  into  a  billet  of  wood,  it  may  dyna- 
mically knock  but  it  does  not  chemically  enter. 

The  same  persistent  duplexity  characterises  the 
tubular  web;  for  this  in  turn  is  made  up  of  tubes. 
As  in  the  ancient  homoiomeria  hair  was  made  of 
lesser  hairs,  and  feathers  of  lesser  feathers,  and  stones 
of  lesser  stones,  and  the  world  at  large  of  lesser 
worlds,  so  every  tube  seems  made  of  lesser  tubes  that 
are  made  of  tubes  themselves,  until,  beyond  the  limits 
of  microscopic  observation,  the  sensible  identity 
fades  in  the  infinite  divisibility  of  matter,  lost  in 
the  bottomless  well  where,  according  to  Democritus, 
Truth  disappears  from  mortal  view. 

From  the  dynamic  viewpoint,  whence  we  naively 
recognize  Nature  and  becoming,  and  seem  to  visual- 
ize change  and  increase  and  diminution,  the  static 
schema  excludes  any  such  idea  of  intelligence  as  we 
can  admit  or  understand ;  and  it  vacates  the  reality 
of  all  human  experience.  It  denies  the  possibility  of 
novelty  in  nature  and  consciousness,  and  imposes  an 
All-knower,  with  a  "general"  personality,  yet  com- 
petent to  identify  individual  idiosyncrasies  of 
thought  and  feeling  within  a  compass  as  small  as 
their  own.  If  a  man  were  down,  in  life's  battle,  and 
had  "taken  the  count"  up  to  nine,  this  All-knower 
should  himself  be  within  one  tick  of  the  knock-out. 
How  else  could  he  realize  the  finite  measure  of  such 
a  consciousness? 


18  PLURIVERSE 

Wavering  between  these  adverse  viewpoints,  phil- 
osophy develops  various  "activity  situations,"  in 
which  being  and  change  are  so  confused  that  a  logi- 
cal statement  of  the  case  involves  an  identity  of  dif- 
ference. Our  conscious  experience  of  life  and  time 
is  of  a  continuum  of  process  and  change,  growth  and 
decay,  becoming  and  deceasing,  in  which  philosophy 
raises  a  question  as  to  what  really  is.  She  must  in- 
sist that  only  what  fully  is  is  real,  and  she  challenges 
a  condition  of  becoming  for  somewhat  that  has  fully 
become.  We  are  loth  to  admit  that  any  reality  can 
only  partly  be  —  as  if  it  were  half  in  and  half  out  of 
the  real  world,  or  as  if  the  world  were  but  half  real, 
or  as  if  what  we  mean  by  identity  is  difference  and 
process.  All  these  questions  arise  from  any  careful 
consideration  of  what  we  thoughtlessly  call  the  pres- 
ent tense. 

A  contract  for  a  working  model,  or  even  a  "side 
elevation"  of  the  present  tense,  done  under  all  its 
scientific  exactitudes,  would  drive  the  best  inspired 
architect  to  either  a  madhouse  or  the  ultimate  surd. 
He  would  have  to  first  effect  a  compromise  with  the 
static  viewpoint,  which  can  only  under  protest  coun- 
tenance any  present  tense  at  all.  For  to  Sufficient 
Intelligence  (and  no  other  can  obtain)  all  things 
always  are,  and  the  form  of  eternity  excludes  any 
form  of  time.  An  "eternal  present"  is  a  whim  which 
the  sure  method  quickly  evaporates.  But  adopting 
the  dynamic  viewpoint,  as  the  only  feasible  one  for 
us,  his  first  outlook  would  encounter  two  cross-uni- 
versals.  The  spacial  universe  cuts  like  a  disk  at 
right  angles  across  the  universe  of  duration,  and  the 
crux  of  reality  is  at  the  instant  junction  of  the  two. 


DUPLEXITY  19 

Around  this  point  swarm  like  bees  and  hornets  the 
positive  and  negative  queries  of  speculation.  Here 
the  time  current  offers  to  criticism  its  three  moments 
of  present,  past  and  future,  to  be  construed  under  the 
requirements  of  community,  contrast,  opposition  and 
compensation;  and  at  the  same  intersection  the 
spacial  universe  presents  to  the  wavering  time  ele- 
ment the  sympathy  of  a  problematic  unity  of  matter 
and  form,  of  real  and  ideal. 

We  shall  not  dwell  upon  this  crucial  collocation 
just  here,  but  will  offer  a  suggestion  as  to  "the  na- 
ture of  things,"  always  intending  by  the  word  nature, 
the  gerund  or  noun-participle,  as  the  act,  fact  and 
substance  of  being  born. 

An  object  of  sensation  is  presumptively  such  in 
the  present  tense  only;  but  as  subject  to  the  passage 
of  time  it  is  also  presumptively  in  continual  change, 
and  therefore  never  wholly  identical,  never  quite  the 
same ;  but  since  it  may  not  at  once  be  wholly  other  in 
its  change,  the  object  as  such  is  a  quasi  identity  of 
changing  aspects,  and  the  endurance  of  similarity 
in  any  one  of  its  aspects  Constitutes  it  as  a  "thing." 
A  cross-section,  or  a  breaking-off  of  the  stream  of 
time  at  any  given  instant,  would  show  an  aspect  on 
its  hither  end. 

As  a  merely  provisional  simile  I  will  instance  the 
body  of  time  as  a  confectioner's  batch  of  candy, 
made  to  be  drawn  out  into  the  usual  "sticks."  In 
making  up  the  batch  (ordinarily  of  25  pounds),  the 
expert  makes  a  fasces  or  rope  of  rolls  of  differently 
colored  stock,  so  ingeniously  disposed  that  when 
drawn  out,  and  broken  at  any  point,  the  ends  of  any 
stick  will  present  a  picture,  possibly  of  a  star,  or  a 


20  PLURIVERSE 

rose,  or  a  bird.  If  these  various  strands  of  the  fasces 
may  represent  the  elements  or  laws  in  the  body  of 
the  stream  of  time,  we  may  envisage  a  thing  in  the 
present  tense  as  an  aspect  or  a  picture  done  on  the 
hither  ends  of  the  laws. 

Certain  thoughts  in  passing  are  inevitable  in  view 
of  the  present  tense,  or  of  its  genius  as  we  apprehend 
it.  Our  first  necessity  is,  in  attempting  to  assume 
a  definite  present  as  distinct  from  the  future  and  the 
past,  we  materialize  or  embody  it,  and  subject  it  to 
the  infinite  divisibility  —  the  real  centre  of  the  ideal 
centre,  etc.  (i.  e.  reconciling  matter  and  form).  But 
when  we  pause  in  satisfaction  at  the  present  tense 
in  its  three  stadia  of  present,  past,  and  future,  the 
same  acumen  which  proposes  these  divisions  finds 
itself  called  upon  to  grade  the  three  into  one  an- 
other :  there  are  as  many  degrees  between  the  present 
and  the  future  as  there  are  between  the  future  and 
the  past.  Infinity,  the  bottomless  well,  intercepts 
every  possible  distinction. 

It  was  our  thought  to  apply  these  necessities  to 
practical  music.  The  maestro  may  pride  himself  on 
his  distinction  of  tones  and  semitones,  and  so  deter- 
mine the  matter  of  music,  but  the  genius  of  music 
holds  its  carousal  between  his  lines,  in  infinite  di- 
vision. Here  it  is  that  we  learn  how  the  violin  is 
queen  of  all  instruments.  The  piano,  the  organ,  the 
harp,  are  fixed  at  given  intervals;  only  the  violin 
finds  the  infinite  difference,  where  even  the  pulse  of 
the  artist  varies  the  pressure  on  the  string,  and  de- 
notes the  soul. 

The  recognition  of  these  opposing  viewpoints  is 


DUPLEXITY  21 

the  most  venerable  characteristic  of  the  sagacity  of 
our  earliest  historical  past.  Long  before  the  Greeks 
had  contemplated  the  problematical  aspects  of  the 
One  and  the  Many,  or  of  being  and  not-being,  the 
Semitic  genius  had  detected  the  subtlety  and  the 
fatality  of  truth's  double  tongue.  Even  to  the 
Talmudic  sages  the  legend  of  Job  was  antique,  yet 
therein  the  duplexity  of  the  ultimate  was  as  dis- 
tinctly pronounced  as  it  was  by  Parmenides  or  Zeno. 

In  the  Vulgate  translation  of  this  ancient  scrip- 
ture we  read  that  Zophar  the  Naamathite,  said  unto 
Job:  "And  that  He  would  show  thee  the  secrets  of 
wisdom,  that  they  are  double  to  that  which  is." 
(Job  xi,  6.) 

The  last  clause  here  rather  exaggerates  the  du- 
plexity intended.  In  the  correct  translation  of  the 
original  Hebrew  (as. I  am  instructed)  it  is  wisdom, 
not  the  secrets,  that  is  double;  and  further,  the 
clause  here  is  incomplete,  and  this  as  to  its  most  rele- 
vant and  ingenious  import.  I  may  be  permitted  to 
offer  a  more  accurate  translation: 

"And  that  He  would  reveal  unto  thee  the  secrets  of 
wisdom  —  for  it  is  double  to  that  which  is  really  in 
our  comprehension," 

The  last  word  is  convertible  as  either  physical  pos- 
session or  mental  comprehension.  The  sages  of  the 
Talmud  have  used  "toosi  io"  as  synonymous  with 
wisdom  itself : 

"Thine  eyes  did  see  my  substance,  yet  being  un- 
perfect;  and  in  thy  book  all  my  members  were 
written,  which  in  continuance  were  fashioned,  when 
as  yet  there  was  none  of  them."  (Psalms,  cxxxix,  16.) 


22  PLURIVERSE 

Another  translation : 

"My  undeveloped  substance  did  thy  eyes  see,  and 
in  thy  book  were  all  of  them  written  down  —  the 
days  which  have  been  formed  while  yet  none  of  them 
was  here." 

Again  the  Preacher  said: 

"That  which  hath  been  is  now;  and  that  which  is 
to  be  hath  been  already:  and  God  requireth  that 
which  is  past." 

These  ancient  sentences  overhang  our  lucubra- 
tions, warning  us  how  old  is  philosophy  —  how  early 
man  tried  to  turn  upon  himself  —  to  put  being  into 
thought,  and  thought  into  language,  to  objectify 
an  ultimate  generalization,  a  one  of  it  all  —  only  to 
find,  at  second-thought,  that  at  best  he  was  other 
to  his  one,  and  that  his  ultimate  unity  was  duplexity 
at  last  —  that  the  truth  of  his  knowledge  was  a 
vanishing  phantom  of  endeavor  to  know  —  to  effect 
a  self-relation,  to  realise  being  in  thought,  matter 
in  form,  the  divine  spirit  in  the  Word,  and  the  Word 
in  the  flesh.  All  this  comes  down  to  us  in  the  con- 
fessed failure  and  discontent  of  philosophers:  for 
modern  instance,  in  the  dream  of  Fichte,  of  "being 
out  of  its  being,"  as  into  "existence,"  or  the  claim 
of  Schelling  that  "something  deeper  than  science 
he  certainly  did  Arwoze?,"  or  the  despair  of  Jacobi  that 
there  was  a  light  in  his  heart  which  failed  when  he 
would  bring  it  into  his  understanding,  even  as  Saint 
Paul's  law  in  his  members  antagonized  the  law  in 
his  mind. 

These  troubles  will  in  course  recur  to  us  as  we 
advance  toward  the  revelation  of  the  Mystery, 
wherein  the  unique  must  fail  to  be  articulate  and 


DUPLEXITY  23 

factual,  because  there  can  be  nothing  comparable  as 
either  like  to  it  or  different  from  it  —  it  being  feas- 
ible in  personal  experience  alone. 

Right  here,  for  a  modus  vivendi,  we  must  apologize 
and  if  possible  conciliate.  We  began  by  disqualify- 
ing philosophy  at  its  ostensible  best  —  not  promising 
on  our  own  part  to  philosophize  any  better,  but 
rather  intimating  another  kind  of  satisfaction  — 
and  still  we  are  in  a  way  philosophising.  We  ac- 
knowledge the  discrepancy ;  we  have  to  dogmatize 
even  in  declaring  our  ignorance,  using  an  intelligence 
whose  finality  we  question:  a  kind  of  knowing  that 
we  do  not  know. 

A  claim  of  Sufficient  Intelligence  would  assume  the 
radical  solution  of  the  philosophical  problem,  while 
all  the  intelligence  that  we  know  of  is  secondary 
and  unaccountably  given  to  us  —  so  that  our  course 
is  ever  wavering  between  an  ideal  of  certainty  and  a 
practical  plausibility.  We  shall  hold  that  there  is 
no  "sufficient  reason"  short  of  a  self-relation  which 
we  cannot  admit;  and  while  we  deplore  our  uncer- 
tainty we  cannot  greatly  admire  a  consistency  due 
to  an  arbitrary  and  meretricious  partiality  for 
either  horn  of  an  incorrigible  dilemma.  We  have 
simply  found  the  problem  of  its  practical  unity  in- 
soluble in  the  philosophic  methods  of  the  past ;  and 
our  treatise  is  not  necessarily  impeached  by  the 
adoption,  more  or  less  satisfactorily,  of  a  different 
standard  of  satisfaction  and  a  different  method  of 
attaining  it.  We  admit  equally  the  horns  of  the 
dilemma,  and  by  the  adoption  of  a  name  for  it  hold 
it  in  a  merely  nominal  though  philosophically  useful 
existence. 


24  PLURIVERSE 

When  we  say  that  to  a  Sufficient  Intelligence  all 
things  always  are  (since  for  it  all  causes  or  ra- 
tional principles  shall  have  emptied  their  effects,  and 
forestalled  from  it  all  novelty  and  surprise),  we  are 
entertaining  an  ideal  of  intelligence  higher  than  our 
own  practice  exemplifies;  and  only  by  a  degradation 
of  this  reason  (as  knowing  all  causes  or  fertilities 
exhausted)  can  we  admit  the  reality  of  our  ever-be- 
coming world,  which  nevertheless  our  pains  and 
pleasures  so  positively  and  even  punitively  authenti- 
cate. 

Nevertheless  such  an  all-knowing  intelligence 
is  a  transcendental  presumption.  Critically  con- 
sidered, no  intelligence  as  merely  such  is  sufficient 
for  fundamental  explanation.  Intelligence,  as  we 
exemplify  or  acknowledge  it,  is  after  the  fact  known 
—  except  upon  a  condition  which  we  shall  find  in- 
admissible: to  wit,  that  there  is  no  lapse  or  passage 
of  time  between  the  intention  of  the  subject  and  the 
existence  of  the  fact  known.  Any  such  lapse,  for 
the  thinkers  whom  we  shall  prefer  and  defend  (as 
opposed  to  "self-consciousness,"  so  called),  is  a 
merely  nominal  "identity  of  difference,"  a  clever 
logical  puzzle  which  would  meretriciously  annul  all 
distinction,  since,  forsooth,  difference  must  be  (to 
be  at  all)  identically  such,  while  identity  itself  has 
"all  the  difference  in  the  world"  from  difference  — 
making  strife  the  ill-begotten  father  of  things :  a 
fact,  if  fact  it  is,  of  little  credit  to  philosophy  as 
satisfactory  explanation. 

The  dialectic  position  best  appealing  to  us  would 
assume  a  chasm  between  the  static  and  dynamic 
viewpoints,  the  breadth  and  potentiality  of  which 


DUPLEXITY  25 

vary  with  the  cultural  and  temperamental  differences 
of  philosophers  themselves,  some  of  whom  have  fan- 
cied "truth"  as  in  absolute  contradiction  —  reso- 
lutely holding  being  and  not-being  as  the  same  — 
while  others  have  shaded  or  mellowed  direct  opposi- 
tion by  a  bias  diversion  of  it  into  process  (through 
time's  becoming),  or  else  making  conceptual  ab- 
stractions serve  for  perceptual  or  empirical  uses  — 
which  Kant  forbade. 

It  may  amuse,  however  little  it  may  edify  us,  to 
observe  how  quasi  or  half  truths  and  flimsy  abstrac- 
tions have  in  their  ingenuity,  and  their  novelty  in 
the  growth  of  thought,  lulled  temporarily  the  yearn- 
ing for  absolute  explanation.  In  this  humor  we 
shall  propose  a  substitute  for  creation  out  of 
nothing,  which  shall  give  full  credit  to  Sufficient 
Intelligence  while  yet.  saving  the  vital  experience  of 
the  Many. 

We  saw  in  Section  First,  under  the  hypothesis 
that  reality  is  what  it  is  known  as,  that  the  sizes 
of  things  are  determined  by  organic  lenses,  and  that 
knowledge  through  the  lenses  is  to  that  extent  ostens- 
ibly creative. 

The  popular  supposition  is  of  the  One's  divinely 
creating  Many  in  a  time  process,  and  credit  herein 
is  given  to  some  occult  activity  or  fertility  from 
which  things  come  as  out  of  nothing.  Mere  know- 
ledge seems  incompetent  to  produce,  and  rather  fitted 
to  witness  or  attend.  In  the  case  of  the  sizes,  as 
determined  through  the  organs,  the  effective  power 
is  left  a  mystery  within  or  behind  the  subjective 
spirit;  but  as  for  the  One  creating  the  Many,  or 
being  creditably  responsible  for  the  Many,  we  shall 


26  PLURIVERSE 

see  that  in  the  nature  of  things,  without  any  dy- 
namic action  or  fertility,  the  Many  belong,  and  are 
potential  in  the  One,  as  a  necessity  seen  in  its  nature 
from  the  static  viewpoint  of  Sufficient  Intelligence, 
whence  all  things  always  are. 

We  are  now  to  suppose  a  human  eye  placed  just 
without  the  perimeter  of  the  revolving  earth,  which 
would  pass  it  at  a  speed  of  1,000  miles  per  hour. 
In  the  unity  of  the  intelligence  behind  the  eye  there 
is  the  many-ness  of  1,000  miles.  If  now,  in  the 
freedom  of  our  hypothesis,  we  increase  the  intelli- 
gent unity  by  enlarging  the  eye  to  the  size  of  the 
earth,  the  1,000  miles,  as  a  reality  of  organic  con- 
sciousness (a  Many),  would  fade  into  a  mere  poten- 
tiality in  the  unity  of  the  larger  consciousness.  For 
the  earth  would  be,  to  the  larger  consciousness,  not 
larger  comparatively  than  a  lady's  watch,  so  slow 
that  the  hour-hand,  though  taking  all  day  for  one 
revolution  and  hardly  seen  to  move,  would  beat  her 
two  to  one.  To  the  Sufficient  Intelligence  the  Many 
belong  in  and  are  as  real  as  the  One. 

The  One  of  identity,  or  pure  being,  shall  hold  in- 
volved and  nullified  all  difference  and  form.  To  il- 
lustrate this  position : 

Taking  a  bushel  of  crude  stones,  we  may  beat  them 
down  to  say  three  pecks  of  dust,  a  smaller  bulk ;  but 
while  the  crude  stones,  piled  as  a  cairn  upon  a  windy 
knoll,  might  so  endure  for  many  years,  the  dust  in 
the  same  exposure  would  soon  be  blown  away. 

This  familiar  fact  becomes  curious  when  we  con- 
sider that  the  particles  of  dust  are  likely,  each  by 
itself,  to  be  of  the  same  specific  gravity  essentially 
as  the  bulk  it  helped  to  constitute,  if  not  heavier,  for 


DUPLEXITY  27 

presumably  the  bulk  would  have  taken  fracture  where 
it  was  least  substantial.  But  a  moment's  reflection 
warns  us  that  the  particle  of  dust  has  a  larger  sur- 
face-exposure in  proportion  to  its  weight.  When 
you  cut  a  body  in  two  you  expose  two  new  surfaces, 
while  the  weight  remains  unchanged;  and  the  wind, 
having  the  advantage  of  pressure  upon  a  greater 
superficial  area,  more  easily  carries  the  particle 
away. 

We  are  concerned  here  with  two  units  of  identity 
in  the  same  environment.  A  stone  is  a  stone,  surely, 
but  in  this  experiment  it  appears  that  the  larger 
stone  is  not  only  more  but  more  in  proportion  than 
the  smaller;  and  if  we  ask,  in  proportion  to  what? 
the  answer  is,  to  the  show  it  makes  in  the  sensible 
world.  From  the  viewpoint  of  mere  appearance,  in- 
crease is  creative  of  identity  by  the  degradation  or 
absorption  of  form;  the  accretion  of  the  one  bulk 
vacates  the  discretion  of  the  many  of  the  dust ;  it 
takes  in  all  of  their  form,  which  as  an  abstraction 
enhances  the  identical  and  concrete.  And  if  identity 
appreciates  by  the  accretion  and  destruction  of 
form,  the  supreme  One,  the  identity  of  totality  is, 
within,  dark  and  formless;  for  all  externality  or 
marginality  or  aught  of  discretion  must  disappear — 
unless,  always,  the  One  is  not  only  one,  but  other  to 
itself,  and  in  so  far  not  itself;  i  e.,  its  "truth"  is 
contradiction. 

We  may  well  rest  a  moment  amid  these  baffling  sub- 
tleties to  better  account  for  them.  They  do  not  ex- 
plain; we  can  at  best  discover  the  grounds  of  their 
plausibility.  There  is  no  standpoint  from  which 
philosophy  can  be  despised.  The  cosmos  is  a  mo- 


28  PLURIVERSE 

mentous  affair,  and  we  are  ourselves  so  clever,  we 
cannot  repress  the  presumption  that  it  can  be  un- 
derstood. We  have  but  to  watch  the  stars  to  believe 
in  "perpetual  motion,"  at  least  with  their  assistance. 
But  our  immediate  interest  is  in  the  quasi  principles 
or  half-truths,  abstractions  partway  across  the  dia- 
lectic chasm,  which  have  been  meretriciously  posed 
in  their  day  as  explanatory.  There  is  no  great  risk 
of  credit  in  quoting  from  Pythagoras  that  number 
is  the  substance  of  things,  or  from  Aristotle  that 
matter  is  by  the  degradation  of  form,  when  we  see 
Kant  with  no  other  first  principle  than  "sponta- 
neity" —  just  an  empty  word,  presuming  fertility ;  or 
see  Hegel  and  Fichte  impregnating  negation  and 
self- relation ;  or  see  the  modern  Germans,  discom- 
fited by  a  stale  personality,  depersonalizing  the  pop- 
ular attributes  of  God,  and  using  them  sans  credit; 
or  see  M.  Bergson  investing  life  and  time  and  evo- 
lution with  all  the  efficiency  of  creative  intention.  We 
do  not  disparage  the  ingenuity  of  these  professors,  at 
least  not  so  much  as  we  distrust  their  veracity,  or 
regret  their  shortsightedness  in  deeming  their  results 
"philosophy." 

Resuming  consideration  of  the  quasi  power  of 
abstractions :  When  we  reflect  upon  our  utter  igno- 
rance of  the  origin  of  the  world's  dynamic  forces,  and 
recall  that  the  most  ambitious  account  of  the  meta- 
physical forces  halts  at  an  inane  "spontaneity"  — 
a  pseudo-fertility  of  emptiness  —  or  at  best  at  a 
"free  will"  whose  freedom  is  essentially  its  exemp- 
tion from  any  native  influence  or  tendency  —  we  are 
startled  and  interested  by  any  hint  from  the  dy- 


DUPLEXITY  29 

namic  world  that  force  may  be  due  to  liberty.  It 
seems  at  first  a  rather  hopeless  resource,  but  some 
admissions  are  necessary  to  unaccountable  fact. 

The  amateur  in  dialectic  may  well  need  some  coach- 
ing here,  lest  he  too  hastily  retort  that  getting  force 
out  of  liberty  is  nonsense ;  the  sophist  may  catch  him 
if  he  does  not  watch  out.  All  talk  is  dangerous.  The 
amateur  might  not  hesitate  in  saying  that  nothing 
can  create  —  he  meaning  that  creation  is  impossible ; 
but  the  sophist  will  stare  in  mock  admiration  at  the 
oracle:  he  is  interested  in  production,  and  wonders 
at  this  account  of  it,  and  he  proceeds  to  magnify  it 
with  his  largest  lens :  "Nothing  can  create !  noth- 
ing, nothing,  NOTHING!"  By  capitalizing  nonen- 
tity, and  "taking  you  at  your  word,"  and  pre- 
tending that  the  oracle  is  worth  while,  he  finds  a 
position  in  your  amateur  negation:  NOTHING, 
logically,  is  "something"  (i.  e.  something  for  dis- 
cussion) ;  and  indeed  a  professor  of  capital  reputa- 
tion has  held  half  the  civilized  world  for  a  hundred 
years  staring  at  the  paradox  (transcendentally 
true)  that  "negation  is  positive  in  its  result."  The 
cue  of  the  dignified  skeptic  is  possibly  rather  silence 
than  dogmatism.  And  as  a  sop  to  Hegelians  we  may 
mention  an  instance  where  the  negative  seems  to  have 
positive  effect,  not  merely  as  logical  but  as  empirical. 
We  allude  to  the  tacking  of  a  ship  against  the  wind, 
an  everyday  affair. 

With  the  wind  blowing,  say  directly  from  the  west, 
the  expert  skipper  faces  his  sails  diagonally  to  its 
pressure,  and  so,  by  tacking  alternately  to  the  right 
and  left,  glides  forward  by  degrees  in  the  direction 
of  its  very  source.  When  we  consider  how  the  water 


30  PLURIVERSE 

is  entirely  negative  or  inert,  while  the  wind  is  the  only 
motive  force,  the  fact  that  the  west  wind  blows  the 
vessel  to  the  west  calls  for  an  explanation  of  the 
"dialectic"  of  the  skipper,  which  out  of  the  negative 
water  achieves  his  positive  advance.  Now  all  this 
involves  a  curious  question  of  our  practical  experi- 
ence of  physical  motion  and  momentum.  When  I 
was  young,  in  almost  any  attic  in  our  Eastern  States 
there  was  liable  to  be  found  the  debris  of  some  device 
for  "perpetual  motion."  The  latter  is  not  a  neces- 
sarily extravagant  dream.  The  stars  seem  to  exem- 
plify it;  and  even  if  one  could  not  independently 
produce  momentum  for  mechanical  uses,  still  with 
the  help  of  the  motion  everywhere  apparent  he  might 
hope  to  "hitch  his  wagon  to  a  star,"  and  get  the  ben- 
efit of  its  impulse.  And  a  certain  striking  fact  in 
physics  encouraged  the  hope  of  an  absolute  produc- 
tion of  momentum  from  freedom,  as  if  thereby  one 
might  share  the  fortune  of  the  stars  themselves,  how- 
ever they  come  by  it. 

This  fact  is  certainly  occult  at  least,  however  it 
may  be  ultimately  demonstrated  as  superficial.  In 
any  event  it  seems  to  have  been  the  spur  to  many 
fruitless  Yankee  inventions.  The  fact  was  this: 

A  pound-weight  falling  to  the  platform  of  a  spring 
balance-scale  will,  in  a  fall  of  twenty  inches,  gain 
about  nine  pounds ;  it  will  deliver  the  impact  of  a 
ten  pound  weight;  or  practically  it  will  weigh  ten 
pounds.  Whence  are  the  extra  nine  pounds?  The 
earth  itself  weighs  but  one  pound  less  while  the  pound 
weight  is  free  and  falling;  and  of  course,  to  that  ex- 
tent, "the  belt  is  off,"  the  moon  gets  away,  etc.,  but 
the  impact,  the  blow,  the  momentum,  seems  wholly 


DUPLEXITY  31 

due  to  time  and  freedom,  which  have  no  material  cost. 
The  hope  of  inventors  has  been  to  so  use  the  momen- 
tum gained  as  to  replace  the  fallen  pound  for  another 
fall,  with  some  advantage  won  for  mechanical  uses. 
But  unfortunately  the  time  required  to  replace  the 
pound  weight  is  as  exacting  as  the  time  of  the  fall- 
ing was  liberal,  and  the  experiment  fails. 

The  lesson  is  not  unimportant  for  us.  If  the 
stars  are  a  limited  set,  the  outermost  orbs  in  their 
circular  courses  may  advance  toward  the  unlimited 
and  unoccupied  space,  against  the  general  gravita- 
tion of  the  system  as  a  whole,  in  this  false  hope  that 
the  momentum  gained  will  restore  them  to  perihelium, 
so  that  their  motion,  however  originally  given,  will 
be  retained  forever.  But  this  hypothesis  has  no 
standing  in  any  rational  court.  Gravitation  ad- 
mitted as  a  general  principle  of  matter  will  "hold 
the  universe  together"  with  a  vengeance!  No  gain 
of  momentum  from  "freedom,"  no  series  of  motions 
within  a  limited  set  of  stars,  can  withhold  the  whole 
system  from  falling  to  a  single  center.  There  must 
be  as  much  gravitation  outward  as  inward,  to  keep 
the  stars  apart;  and  the  conception  of  space  as 
wholly  subjective  does  not  reach  the  problem  at  all, 
for  transcendental  and  empirical  realities  alike  are 
necessarily  subject  to  the  same  a  priori  rules.  Si- 
dereal orbits  are  possible  only  in  a  limitless  field. 

Still  this  growth  and  momentum,  born  of  freedom 
(which  metaphysically  costs  just  nothing),  awaken 
curious  reflection.  You  may  see  a  woodsman  with 
his  axe  by  a  mere  twist  of  his  wrist  sever  a  three- 
inch  limb  by  use  of  momentum,  though  the  steady 
pressure  of  all  his  strength  might  not  sever  it  in  an 


32  PLURIVERSE 

hour.  So  a  man  with  one  blow  of  a  sledge  will  crush 
a  stone  that  may  have  upheld  a  temple  for  a  thou- 
sand years.  Why  did  not  the  still  pressure  of  the 
temple  accumulate  momentum  from  time,  as  does 
the  free  swing  of  the  sledge  or  the  axe,  or  the  fatting 
pound? 

And  there  is  a  psychological  momentum  of  the 
same  kind.  A  man  may  wind  up  his  resolution  for 
an  emergency,  as  the  boy  cries  "One,  two,  three," 
and  "Go !" 

There  is  such  an  instance  in  the  play  of  "Othello," 
which  Shaksperian  critics  seem  to  have  disre- 
garded. Just  before  stabbing  himself,  and  after 
having  protested  his  hard  fate,  the  Moor  says: 

Set  you  down  this; 
And  say  besides  —  that  in  Aleppo  once, 
Where  a  malignant  and  a  turbaned  Turk 
Beat  a  Venetian  and  traduced  the  state, 
I  took  by  the  throat  the  circumcised  dog, 
And  smote  him  —  thus. 

I  find  no  historical  warrant  for  the  precedent  here 
cited.  I  rather  suspect  that  the  great  dramatist 
depended  upon  his  audience  to  realize  that  in  this 
rigmarole,  possibly  preconcerted  for  such  an  occa- 
sion, the  desperate  hero  was  screwing  his  courage  to 
the  sticking  point. 

Our  Americans  may  well  regard  it  as  an  endorse- 
ment of  our  ostensible  freedom  that  a  little  more  than 
a  century  of  it  has  evoked  more  patented  inventions 
than  are  recorded  in  the  whole  history  of  England, 
saying  nothing  of  our  more  liberal  religious  thought. 


DUPLEXITY  33 

We  may  infer  that  idle  freedom  is  a  more  prolific 
mother  of  invention  than  is  the  proverbial  necessity. 
An  Italian  peasant  enters  the  lofty  vestibule  of 
St.  Peter's  with  bowed  and  uncovered  head;  before 
him,  in  the  dim  religious  light,  the  pillared  silence 
stoops  from  arches  vast  to  uplift  the  melody  of  the 
finest  voices  to  be  gathered  in  Europe,  while  haply 
the  great  organ,  yearning  in  the  pathos  of  its  theme, 
shudders  at  the  memory  of  Calvary  and  the  Via  Dol- 
orosa.  On  every  side  around  him  appear  the  loving 
contributions  of  a  thousand  years  of  art  and  culture. 
Who  or  what  is  he  among  these  aesthetic  treasures, 
which  for  his  unsophisticated  reverence  have  an  equal 
date  with  Andes  and  Ararat,  to  question  or  to  criti- 
cise the  doctrine  that  he  hears  ?  An  original  thought 
if  he  could  have  one  would  be  anomalous,  even  pro- 
fane; he  is  both  mentally  and  materially  overborne 
and  outclassed.  Meantime,  in  a  land  far  from  this 
sacred  establishment, 

A  land  where  the  mountains  are  nameless, 
And  the  rivers  all  run  God  knows  where, 

Like  the  lives  that  are  erring  and  aimless 
And  the  deaths  that  just  hang  by  a  hair, 

the  plainsman,  with  his  rope  and  his  gun,  takes  the 
withers  of  the  bay  mare  lovingly  between  his  cal- 
loused knees  for  the  long  lope  that  covers  her  thirty 
leagues  between  sun  and  sun.  Your  thousand  years 
are  but  as  yesterday  to  him,  and  if  he  wants  a 
church  he  must  build  it,  under  no  other  authority 
or  inspiration  than  his  own. 

These  philosophical  controversies,  so  confident  and 
at  times  so  bitter,  what  are  they  more  or  other  than 


34  PLURIVERSE 

cultured  and  temperamental  preferences  vibrating 
between  the  static  and  dynamic  viewpoints,  as  in 
turn  matter  and  form,  identity  and  difference,  and 
all  the  other  nominal  abstractions  are  allowed  to 
exchange  places  in  an  incorrigible  duplexity  which 
in  turn  stultifies  its  claimant  as  of  an  ultimate  gen- 
eralization? How  shall  one  claim  the  "world"  as 
thus  or  this  and  no  other,  with  the  deeps  of  being  as 
other  behind  his  eye?  What  hope  of  explanation  re- 
mains when  the  last  word  of  dialectics  shows  an 
equal  alternity  of  being  and  not-being,  identity  and 
difference,  reality  and  appearance,  and  finally  of 
reason  and  unreason? 

The  coil  is  about  us,  and  at  once  we  are  and  are 
not  the  coil.  Can  this  be  "true"?  or  if  true  is  it 
worth  while?  Since  it  seems  that  whatever  we  may 
say  will  from  some  point  of  view  pass  as  true,  we 
shall  venture  the  paradox  that  chance  is  the  only 
sure  thing. 

The  vulgar  reverence  which  accounts  him  an  im- 
becile who  accepts  anything  as  referable  to  other 
than  personality,  or  in  fact  to  fate,  is  subject  to 
criticism  as  a  psychological  and  possibly  erroneous 
conceit;  and  we  take  occasion  to  say  a  word  for 
chance,  as  quite  as  explanatory  as  any  other  hy- 
pothesis —  as  essentially  just,  and  certainly  exempt 
from  the  whims  and  vagaries  whose  possibility  is  the 
chief  prerogative  of  spontaneous  and  independent 
personality. 

It  can  be  only  through  positive  injustice  and  par- 
tiality if  all  being  and  becoming  have  not  an  equal 
chance;  for  chance  is  a  daughter  of  justice,  if  jus- 


DUPLEXITY  35 

tice  should  be,  and  her  deformity  would  be  a  scandal 
to  the  cosmic  empyrean. 

Chance  could  be  only  half-bad  at  the  worst  — 
surely  as  apt  to  be  good  as  bad  —  and  experience, 
in  all  our  human  policy,  finds  it  dependable  and  suf- 
ficiently fair.  Be  it  as  blind  as  you  please,  all 
business  defers  to  it.  And  why  not?  Is  it  not 
obvious  that  only  some  monstrous  malignity  could 
permanently  overbalance  the  normal  equality  and 
indifference  of  things  in  themselves?  Why  should 
they  go  crazy,  and  destroy  value  (so  opposing  the 
Good,  which  was  Plato's  first  principle  of  possibility 
and  continuance)  ? 

(We  are  not  assuming  to  explain,  but  proposing 
to  the  reader  the  contingency  under  which  the  ques- 
tion, why  things  are,  is  no  more  important  than  the 
question,  why  should  they  not  be.) 

With  three  true  dice,  marked  respectively  G,  o, 
and  d,  you  will,  as  a  rule,  in  six  throws  get  the  name, 
God,  with  no  intention  of  so  doing.  With  the  ap- 
propriate nine  dice  and  letters  you  will  in  362,880 
throws  get  the  sentence,  God  is  good;  that  is  to  say, 
the  fact  will  be  extraordinary  and  remarkable  if  you 
do  not;  failure  of  such  a  result  would  prompt  the 
player  to  seek,  and  usually  to  find  a  malformation  of 
the  dice.  The  sentiment  suggested  to  him  by  the 
disposition  of  the  letters  infers  no  bearing  of  its 
intention  on  the  result.  It  would  be  irrational,  say- 
ing you  should  not  expect  such  a  result.  Similarly 
reasoning,  the  elements  being  given,  in  #  throws 
one  should  get  the  universe  (if  it  were  a  whole)  ;  and 
any  sentiment  of  wonder  arising  at  its  contempla- 
tion would  be  overborne  by  the  afterthought  that, 


36  PLURIVERSE 

given  any  conservative  principle  of  value,  there  is 
an  equal  wonder  why  it  should  not  be. 

The  popular  doctrine  of  evolution  is  a  coarse-hand 
script  of  the  persistence  of  value,  or  the  Good, 
whereby  the  fittest  survives  in  heredity.  Given 
such  a  conservative  principle,  in  the  profusion  of 
nature  which  affords  a  host  of  germs  as  against  one 
that  survives,  the  aggressive  force  of  the  fittest  must 
hereditarily  improve  the  species  by  selecting  the  most 
vivacious ;  and  not  so  in  general,  but  in  every  detail 
of  animal  organization  the  conservative  principle 
must  adopt  the  betterments  which  happen;  and  in 
the  limitless  time,  which  costs  nothing,  chance  and 
heredity  will  have  rationally  contributed  all  that, 
afterwards,  appeals  to  aesthetic  appreciation. 

We  are  not  to  wonder  then,  when  the  aesthetic 
parasite,  ingenious  and  capable  on  his  own  account, 
flatters  his  vanity  as  a  representative  or  model  of 
the  genius  of  the  cosmos,  and  attributes  all  things  to 
personality  —  forgetting,  or  rather  not  thinking, 
that  under  criticism  personality  is  the  greatest 
wonder  of  all. 

Thus  we  may  readily  suppose  him  misconstruing, 
under  a  claim  of  "final  cause,"  an  appreciation  at 
the  end  of  things  into  an  intention  at  their  begin- 
ning. 

The  reliability  and  permanence  of  chance  are  the 
most  consolatory  elements  of  philosophy.  The  no- 
tion that,  left  to  chance,  all  would  go  wild  and  un- 
dependable,  miscalculates  experience,  and  (as  before 
noticed)  calls  for  a  positive  malignity  to  over- 
weigh  the  just  indifference  and  stolidity  or  essen- 


DUPLEXITY  37 

tial  inertia  of  things  in  themselves.  There  needs  a 
positive  and  peremptory  why  the  ace  should  come  up 
an  inconvenient  number  of  times.  Justice  is  balance. 
The  Good  is  not  best,  upon  the  whole;  it  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  deserved,  and  it  is  unjust,  by 
comparison,  to  the  indifferent  and  commonplace;  it 
shows  a  heat  in  the  bosom  of  fate. 


CHAPTER  II 
IDEALISM 

THE  word  idealism  has  been  so  drawled  through 
perfunctory  and  irresponsible  discourse  that 
one  must  speak  by  the  card  if  he  would  not 
be  undone  by  the  reckless  equivocation.  Fortunately 
the  most  fashionable  authority  in  the  premises  has 
left  a  categorical  definition  of  the  term  that  will 
bear  criticism  as  well  as  will  any  statement  of  an 
insoluble  problem. 

In  the  year  1840  the  editor  of  Hegel's  works  is- 
sued a  small  volume  specially  composed  or  selected 
by  Karl  Rosencranz,  presenting  Hegel's  original  out- 
line of  his  course  of  lectures  in  the  gymnasium  at 
Niirnberg  in  1808-11.  We  quote  from  his  exposi- 
tion of  the  "Phenomenology  of  Spirit,"  as  delivered 
in  the  second  year  of  the  course : 

"Our  ordinary  knowing  has  before  itself  only  the 
object  which  it  knows ;  it  does  not  at  first  make  an 
object  of  the  knowing  itself.  But  the  whole  which 
is  extant  in  the  act  of  knowing  includes  the  object 
and  the  ego  that  knows,  and  the  relation  between 
them,  namely  consciousness. 

"In  philosophy,  the  determinations  of  the  know- 
ing include  not  only  the  determinations  of  objective 
things  (as  such)  but  also  a  determination  of  the 
knowing  to  which  they  belong  —  this  likewise  in  com- 

88 


IDEALISM  39 

mon  with  things.  In  other  words  (always  there  are 
other  words),  they  include  both  objective  and  sub- 
jective determinations;  or  rather  (sic)  definite  spe- 
cies of  relation  of  the  object  and  the  subject  to 
each  other. 

"Since  things  and  their  determinations  are  both 
in  the  same  knowing,  it  is  quite  possible,  on  the  one 
hand,  to  view  the  same  (the  original)  things  as  in 
and  for  themselves  outside  of  consciousness,  given 
to  the  latter  as  foreign  and  already  existing  material 
for  it;  on  the  other  hand,  however,  the  view  is  pos- 
sible that  consciousness  itself  posits  this  world,  and 
produces  or  modifies  the  determinations  of  the  same, 
through  its  mediating  relations  and  self-activity, 
either  wholly  or  in  part.  The  first  mode  of  view  is 
called  Realism,  the  second  Idealism. 

"The  subject,  more  definitely  apprehended,  is 
Spirit  (the  mind).  It  is  phenomenal  when  essen- 
tially relating  to  an  existing  object;  it  is  so  far 
consciousness.  The  science  of  consciousness  is 
therefore  called  the  phenomenology  of  Spirit. 

"But  the  mind,  according  to  its  self-activity 
within  itself  and  in  relation  to  itself  independent  of 
all  relation  to  others,  is  considered  in  the  science  of 
mind  proper,  or  psychology." 

This  private  outline  for  a  course  of  public  lec- 
tures is  a  kind  of  soliloquy,  in  which  the  lecturer 
forecasts  clearly  for  his  own  guidance  the  substance 
to  be  amplified  in  his  future  discourse.  Its  rugged 
and  categorical  sentences  call  down  literature  from 
its  vague  and  aesthetic  atmosphere  to  scientific  analy- 
sis of  experience,  and  the  precise  meaning  we  intend 
in  the  language  that  we  use.  We  find  that  we  have 


40  PLURIVERSE 

been  making  objective  topics  of  particulars  which  are 
internal  and  spiritual,  or  else  are  so  blended  of 
matter  and  mixed  as  to  fail  of  right  identification. 

Experience  more  and  more  aggravated  the  an- 
tagonism between  sense  and  reliable  understanding, 
as  to  whether  reality  was  external  or  internal,  or 
partly  each.  Things  of  many  kinds,  which  should 
be  real  and  identical  of  themselves,  not  only  change 
constantly  in  time  but  become  different  through  their 
environment  and  the  subjective  conditions  of  their 
observers.  The  summer  haze  doubles  the  size  of  the 
sun,  and  a  moral  haze  magnifies  the  two  mites  of  the 
widow.  "Things  are  not  what  they  seem'*;  we  are 
at  a  loss  in  locating  reality,  whether  mental,  mate- 
rial or  moral. 

A  tree  falls  in  the  woods,  and  there  is  a  roar  —  i.e. 
if  any  creature  hears  it,  but  not  otherwise.  The 
discrepancy  here,  between  the  popular  and  the  ideal 
notions,  comes  from  neglect  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween sound,  as  in  our  experience,  and  vibration  of 
the  air,  which  becomes  sound  only  as  affecting  audi- 
tory nerves ;  and  this  prompts  the  awkward  asser- 
tion of  the  idealist,  that  there  is  no  sound  unheard. 
But  when  he  says  there  can  be  no  pain  unfelt,  the 
former  assertion  seems  less  anomalous.  So  when 
we  say  a  lemon  is  sour,  we  are  only  locating  ex- 
ternally our  own  sensation;  the  lemon  will  not  be 
sour  if  left  alone.  We  find  that  we  have  given  to 
experience  an  externality  which  must  be  identically 
lived,  to  be  at  all  —  not  but  that  there  may  be  ex- 
ternal ingredients  involved  with  the  experience. 

So  in  the  case  of  certain  relatives.  We  say  of  a 
certain  body,  it  is  hot,  or  it  is  cold ;  but  it  is  neither 


IDEALISM  41 

hot  nor  cold  by  itself,  but  only  by  a  standard.  The 
same  body  may  seem  hot  or  cold  according  to  the 
patient's  temperature.  A  cold-blooded  fish  may  be 
warm  in  water  that  would  chill  an  animal  to  death. 
There  is  no  absolute  thermometer  on  which  cold  is 
a  degree. 

Now  while  this  proposition  of  Hegel,  that  "Con- 
sciousness may  posit  this  world,"  is  altogether  too 
rank  when  taken  for  the  world's  rational  explana- 
tion —  for  consciousness,  to  be  explanatory,  should 
be  wise  and  designing  and  efficient,  and  every  sane 
man  knows  that  he  does  not  designingly  and  volun- 
tarily posit  his  world  —  and  further,  there  is  no 
popular  or  even  esoteric  understanding  of  a  uni- 
versal consciousness  to  which  the  positing  could  be 
rationally  attributed  (and  the  rationale  of  all  con- 
sciousness is  still  left  as  an  unknown  root),  still,  I 
say,  the  categorical  sentence,  "Consciousness  posits 
this  world,"  is  capable  of  a  striking  defence,  and  one 
quite  satisfactory  to  a  faith  that  will  admit  pri- 
marily the  miracle  of  it  all,  or  hold  with  the  good 
Bishop  Berkeley,  that  all  consciousness  and  all  ideas 
are  due  to  the  instant  inspiration  of  God.  For  I 
must  hold  that  so  far  as  "this  world"  can  be  re- 
solved to  color,  form,  size  and  tangibility  —  and  I 
will  include  all  difference  whatsoever  —  it  is  deter- 
mined through  (if  not  by)  consciousness.  But  this 
declaration  shall  evade,  so  far  as  radical  explanation 
is  concerned,  any  power  or  fertility  or  cause  behind 
consciousness,  and  (for  the  moment)  any  account  of 
the  objective  and  historical  order  of  experience  in 
whose  presence  alone  consciousness  is  found  to  de- 
termine for  spirits  the  things  of  this  world. 


42  PLURIVERSE 

Beginning  with  color,  I  say  categorically  that 
color  is  determined  by  the  eye ;  I  do  not  mean  caused 
or  produced  in  an  explanatory  sense,  but  only  that 
it  is  phenomenally  according  to  the  eye,  and  awaits 
its  presence. 

In  voicing  my  experience  I  have  to  assume  a  role 
of  authority  here,  because  my  personal  vision,  al- 
though not  singular,  is  rather  extraordinary,  exem- 
plifying a  binocular  paralogism,  in  which  quite  fre- 
quently each  of  my  eyes  sees  for  itself,  making  for 
me  two  objects  out  of  one;  and  either  of  these  ob- 
jects is  the  reality,  as  confirmed  by  its  tangibility, 
although  they  differ  in  color.  When  I  look  at  a 
lighted  lamp,  say  seven  or  eight  feet  away,  I  see  two 
lamps,  a  foot  apart,  one  giving  a  white  or  clear  light, 
the  other  appearing  yellow.  An  ordinary  iron  stove 
has  for  my  left  eye,  singly,  the  color  common  for 
both  eyes  when  in  normal  focus,  but  to  the  right 
eye  singly  it  appears  bronze.  Nickel  ornaments  are 
to  my  right  eye  of  a  beautiful  brass.  Surely  my 
eyes  determine  these  colors,  even  as  stained  glass 
colors  the  landscape;  but  the  wonder  is  that  the 
lens  of  the  eye,  unlike  the  glass  with  its  one  color, 
discriminates  a  myriad  of  tints  and  shades. 

But  it  is  not  the  mere  color  of  an  object  that 
concerns  me  most.  When  I  see  two  frames  of  one 
picture  on  my  wall,  and  can  hold  my  focus  on  either 
of  them,  I  advance  and  place  my  hand  upon  it  as 
the  real  frame,  and  am  ready  to  stake  and  soul 
that  I  touch  the  real. 

This  conception  of  the  phenomenality  or  ideality 
of  objects  becomes  yet  more  impressive  when  we  con- 
sider their  size.  Here  we  have  the  whole  cit}  claimed 


IDEALISM  43 

and  owned  and  mapped  to  the  fraction  of  an  inch, 
and  recorded  in  the  courts,  according  to  standard 
measures  that  are  guarded  with  locks  and  seals. 
An  inch  is  an  inch  and  a  pound  is  a  pound  by  law. 
If  the  earth  should  lose  part  of  its  gravity  unaware, 
all  justice  would  be  frustrated.  The  merchant  who 
had  contracted  to  deliver  a  pound  would  instantly 
become  an  idealist ;  your  pound  is  not  such  in  itself, 
but  is  related  to  and  determined  by  an  external  in- 
tention; it  is  to  be  adjusted  to  the  scheme  of  things, 
like  Shylock's  bond. 

The  literal  truth  of  a  size  in  and  of  itself  would 
set  the  whole  world  crazy.  Here  is  a  pea  —  the 
whole  race  of  men  are  of  one  opinion  as  to  its  size, 
as  established  in  a  universal  environment ;  its  altera- 
tion would  derange  the  procession  of  events.  But 
the  truth  is  that  this  magnitude  of  the  pea  is  but  an 
arbitrary  selection  from  its  myriads  of  sizes,  in  this 
case  determined  by  the  common  visual  lens.  This 
the  true  size !  or  the  real  size !  Place  it  in  the  micro- 
scope and  instantly  it  shows  the  size  of  a  cannon 
ball.  Is  this  a  trick,  an  illusion?  So  far  from  it, 
we  have  lived  the  illusion  hitherto.  The  glass  has 
not  merely  exaggerated  or  distorted  the  features 
visible  to  the  naked  eye;  the  ball  has  grown,  not 
like  a  bladder  at  the  expense  of  its  walls,  but  as 
the  womb  grows,  essentially ;  new  features  and  per- 
haps living  creatures  appear  upon  it.  If  any  credit 
is  to  be  allowed  for  beauty  and  ingenuity  and  use, 
the  experience  demonstrates  the  mechanical  lens  as 
an  improvement  on  the  natural  eye,  yielding,  if  not 
an  ultimate  size,  at  least  a  higher  grade  of  appre- 
ciation or  the  assumed  reality  of  size,  as  somewhat 


44  PLURIVERSE 

in  and  of  itself.  At  any  rate  the  fact  is  manifest 
that  size  is  phenomenal,  and  determined  by  physi- 
cal organism.  Consciousness  does  "posit"  it. 

This  is  a  simple  truth,  comparatively  stale,  to  be 
sure,  amid  the  growing  wonders  of  science,  but  if 
the  reflective  mind  will  philosophize  and  make  the 
most  of  it  the  inferences  are  overwhelming.  The 
moment  we  admit  that  size  is  according  to  the  lens 
of  vision,  "things  in  themselves"  become  conjectural. 

The  ideation  of  form  is  rather  handicapped  than 
staminated  by  the  intrusion  of  tangibility,  until  both 
are  subjectivized.  Plato,  being  pressed  for  a  defi- 
nition of  color,  ventured  the  opinion  that  color  is 
"an  effluence  of  form  commensurate  with  sight,  and 
sensible";  we  should  say,  rather,  an  effluence  of  sur- 
face; and  that  we  rather  think  than  see  form,  which 
is  a  kind  of  eclectic  construction.  Of  course  sense 
and  understanding  are  inseparable,  but  when  we  pro- 
pose analysis  we  are  well  advised  to  keep  them  sepa- 
rate. Even  a  worm  or  a  clam  is  not  so  exclusively 
sensuous  as  not  to  show  some  understanding  when 
its  ground  is  jarred;  but  it  seems  a  fair  distinction 
to  say  that  while  a  realist  knows  what  he  sees,  the 
idealist  sees  what  he  knows  —  or  that  sense  is 
amenable  to  identity,  while  difference  is  due  to 
thought.  Perhaps  one  cannot  see  what  he  does  not 
know,  but  he  surely  may  know  what  he  does  not  see 
—  for  instance,  familiar  things  when  his  eyes  are 
closed,  or  in  the  darkness  of  the  night.  He  knows 
(or  at  least  assumes  that  he  knows)  by  memory  and 
conception,  while  he  has  no  corroborating  percep- 
tion, and  may  be  deceived. 

We  shall  find,  upon  due  reflection,  that  we  have 


IDEALISM  45 

been  very  inconsiderate  in  our  notions  of  form.  For 
instance,  we  have  a  general  notion  of  a  table,  ob- 
viously due  to  the  average  height  of  our  viewpoint, 
and  the  ordinary  position  and  use  of  the  article.  But 
we  may  assume  that  there  are  creatures  on  the  floor, 
and  on  the  ceiling  of  the  room,  to  which  the  table 
presents  a  very  different  formation;  those  overhead 
may  have  never  seen  the  legs,  and  those  below  may 
have  never  seen  the  various  objects  which  the  table  is 
made  to  support.  Theoretically  the  table  has  num- 
berless viewpoints,  from  either  of  which  it  has  a  dif- 
ferent form  —  constantly  different,  as  well  as  also 
successively  different  by  natural  change. 

Now  as  no  one  of  these  viewpoints  can  claim  an 
authenticity  superior  to  that  of  any  other,  the  table 
has  no  integrity  of  form,  taken  as  an  observed  thing 
in,  or  of,  or  by  itself ;  all  of  its  forms  are  solipsisms, 
each  peculiar  to  a  different  intelligence.  The  thing 
in  itself  therefore  fades  into  a  mere  position  in  the 
objective  order  of  nature,  identical  only  as  a  reliable 
potentiality  in  whose  presence  one  of  the  table-forms 
becomes  actual  in  the  presence  of  a  homogeneous 
spirit. 

For  the  idealist,  identity  is  blind ;  the  "truth"  of 
reality  is  distinction,  which  can  be  only  in  intelli- 
gence. It  is  very  old  philosophy,  that  "one"  is  made 
by  limiting  —  made;  the  distinction  is  vital.  There 
is  no  dead  limit-ed;  there  is  only  the  unlimited  and 
the  limiting.  Draw  with  chalk  a  circle  on  a  piece  of 
cloth ;  the  circle  is  limiting,  or  limit ;  but  if  you  ask 
for  the  limited,  the  only  answer  is  that  it  is  essentially 
the  unlimited,  the  cloth,  which  is  the  same  without  as 
within  the  circle.  For  idealism,  distinction  is  alive, 


46  PLURIVERSE 

vital.  The  difference  of  two  things  is  not  a  property 
of  either,  but  is  rather  the  property  of  that  which 
relates  them,  or  holds  them  in  distinction.  Here  are 
two  stones,  distinguished  as  the  big  one  and  the  little 
one ;  are  they  such  in  and  of  themselves  ?  Surely,  no ; 
for  I  can  change  either  as  such  by  increasing  or  di- 
minishing the  other.  Or  in  the  case  of  number :  here 
are  six  counters  —  are  they  six  in  themselves?  Each 
is  now  a  sixth  of  the  number;  if  I  surreptitiously 
remove  one,  I  do  not  intrinsically  affect  the  others, 
yet  each  of  them  will  become  a  fifth ;  and  if  a  thing  is 
indifferently  a  sixth  or  a  fifth,  or  is  the  same  whether 
it  is  number  six  or  number  five,  it  can  hardly  claim 
number  in  itself.  Number  is  a  property  of  some  one 
who  can  count. 

So  form  is  not  a  dead  objective  thing  in  itself,  that 
may  persist  without  thinking;  it  is  not  of  stuff,  but 
of  mental  relation.  Here  is  a  "puzzle  picture, 
showing  an  Arab  and  a  camel ;  find  another  Arab." 
Around  the  two  obvious  figures  the  artist  seems  to 
have  indulged  in  scribbling,  mere  trash  to  transient 
observation,  but  which,  nevertheless,  is  all  that  is  to 
be  merely  seen.  If  you  find  the  Arab  in  question  you 
will  have  constructed  his  form  by  selection  and  unifi- 
cation, after  which  the  form  has  become  visible.  We 
draw  a  triangle  on  a  blackboard,  and  habitually 
assume  that  we  see  it  by  the  eye,  regardless  of  its 
idea,  or  the  genius  of  its  construction.  But  can  a 
horse  see  a  triangle?  Take  its  base  line:  why  shall 
he  connect  that  with  the  two  converging  sides  above? 
Why  not  rather  affect  the  parallel  with  the  edge  of 
the  board  below?  How  shall  he  care  where  those  lines 
go  or  end,  while  there  is  no  form  in  his  mind?  He  can 


IDEALISM  47 

no  more  see  a  triangle  than  he  could  see  a  picture  of 
the  Crucifixion.  He  has  not  the  thought-forms 
through  which  the  rhapsodies  of  sense  become  things. 

The  idealist  will  contend  that  only  the  idea,  or  the 
class,  can  be  real  and  consistent,  while  the  particular 
or  participant  is  contradictory  and  confused;  that 
the  general  cannot  be  asserted  of  the  particular 
thing,  but  at  best  of  thought  or  spirit  only. 

Idealism  seems  to  have  originated  with  the  Greeks 
over  the  question  whether  the  class  or  universal  was 
merely  an  aggregation  of  particulars,  each  a  sepa- 
rate value  individually,  or  a  unit  from  which  their 
value  came  by  participation.  There  are  various 
beautiful  things,  but  whence  the  common  adjective 
that  determines  the  class,  beautiful?  Is  it  an  entity 
that  can  be  thought  as  by  itself?  Taking  the  largest 
generality,  we  assume  an  entity  of  the  many;  but 
when  we  ask  for  the  reality,  instead  of  the  name  — 
when  we  ask  "Many  what?"  we  discover  that  the 
many  are  a  mere  rhapsody  and  confusion,  of  which 
the  whole  stock  and  substance  is  unity  —  it  is  noth- 
ing but  ones,  and  is  itself  nothing,  if  not  resolved  to 
one.  It  was  a  question  between  Socrates  and  Par- 
menides,  whether  everything  had  or  helped  to  con- 
stitute a  class,  or  took  stock  in  an  idea.  Socrates 
favored  a  certain  objectivity  in  beauty  and  truth 
and  justice,  as  general  ideas  that  could  have  partic- 
ipating specimens,  but  at  such  examples  as  filth  or 
nastiness  he  demurred;  they  seemed  wholly  subjective 
postulates  or  opinions.  There  is  nothing  against  the 
real  contents  of  filth,  or  even  nastiness;  it  is  only 
matter  out  of  place ;  a  basket  of  garbage  may  be  of 
royal  cuisine,  only  broken  and  disordered  —  every 


48  PLURIVERSE 

bit  of  it  a  dainty  morsel  by  itself.  The  nastiness  is 
in  our  appreciation  of  its  incongruity  with  conven- 
tional fitness.  But,  then,  could  there  be  ideas  wholly 
subjective?  —  and  so  forth. 

We  yield  too  readily  to  the  claim  and  appearance 
of  motion  —  perhaps  too  readily  to  the  "science" 
that  denies  it.  A  wheel  rolling  on  the  rails  at  sixty 
miles  an  hour  certainly  presents  as  sure  a  demonstra- 
tion of  motion  as  the  nature  of  things  may  afford  — 
the  wheel  going  bodily  on  the  line  of  its  route,  and 
at  the  same  time  revolving  on  its  axis.  But  ques- 
tions arise:  If  the  wheel  moves,  it  must  all  move, 
or  else  go  to  pieces?  It  must.  And  the  track  is 
still?  It  is.  But  if  the  wheel  moves,  while  in  con- 
tact with  the  motionless  track,  the  wheel  would  grind 
the  track ;  but  now  a  changing  particle  of  the  wheel 
at  the  bottom  serves  as  a  pivot  for  the  motion  of 
the  other  particles.  Strip  off  the  rim  of  a  wheel 
and  roll  it  on  its  spoke:  we  see  at  once  that  each 
spoke  holds  its  position  on  the  track  until  the  next 
spoke  comes  down.  If  the  wheel  were  lifted  from  the 
track  and  then  revolved,  this  motionless  part  would 
fly  to  the  centre  and  the  other  parts  would  go  up 
and  down  and  right  and  left  around  it;  set  the 
wheel  upon  the  track  again,  and  then  the  forward 
moving  centre  assumes  also  the  backward  motion 
of  the  bottom,  the  top  doubles  its  speed,  and  the 
bottom  is  as  still  as  the  track. 

But  stillness,  and  centre,  and  bottom  are  all  gen- 
eral ideas,  which  refuse  sensible  expression.  Is  there 
a  bottom  or  a  centre  of  a  wheel,  as  a  material  thing? 
Or  are  these  conceptions  in  the  mind  only?  Surely 
the  latter.  The  perimeter  of  the  wheel  is  a  curve, 


IDEALISM  49 

and  no  section  of  it  can  be  so  short  but  it  will  curve 
up  from  the  track  and  present  the  anomaly  of  being 
both  top  and  bottom;  and  no  portion  of  the  wheel 
can  be  so  small  as  to  be  wholly  a  centre,  but  if  sens- 
ible it  will  be  so  large  as  to  have  an  ideal  centre  of 
its  own. 

Now  in  declaring  the  subjectivity  or  ideality  of 
form  we  found  the  integrity  of  the  idea  threatened 
with  frustration  by  the  tangibility  of  its  ground; 
we  can  sensuously  touch  the  material  that  owns  and 
presents  the  form,  and  so  prove  its  objectivity  as 
awaiting  consciousness,  rather  than  determined  by 
it ;  let  vision  be  never  so  illusive,  touch  seems  a  sure 
test  of  substance ;  let  the  night  be  ever  so  dark,  touch 
proves  the  objective  reality  of  things  whose  inherent 
form  awaits  only  the  kindly  light  to  reveal  them. 

Well,  sensation,  that  involves  pain  and  pleasure, 
should  seem  the  surest  criterion  of  reality.  But 
somehow,  as  at  the  discharge  of  a  gun  the  report 
comes  later  than  the  fact,  the  scientists  will  insist 
that  the  nerves  carry  sensation  only  180  feet  per 
second,  so  that  a  material  man  might  be  dead  before 
he  knew  it,  as  they  tell  of  a  star  still  visible  that 
perished  thousands  of  years  ago. 

But  that  touch  is  less  phenomenal  than  vision, 
that  its  objects  show  a  substantiality  not  relative 
to  or  determined  by  subjective  organization,  is  an 
untenable  hypothesis.  The  attestations  of  sub- 
stance by  tangibility  and  impenetrability  are  vari- 
ously contradictory.  We  have  but  to  notice  the  dif- 
ferent penetrative  forces  of  electricity  and  light. 
Light  goes  through  glass,  and  stops  at  iron,  while 
electricity  goes  through  iron  and  stops  at  glass.  If 


50  PLURIVERSE 

our  visual  faculties  were  electrical,  glass  would  be 
phenomenal,  and  iron  would  be  no  object;  while  if 
our  vision  had  the  penetrative  quality  of  light,  iron 
would  be  an  object,  while  pure  glass  would  be  in- 
visible. We  see  only  what  we  cannot  see  through. 

We  gather  from  these  reflection  the  potential  sig- 
nificance of  Hegel's  definition  of  idealism,  as  the  doc- 
trine that  "consciousness  posits  this  world,"  with  the 
careful  reservation,  "wholly  or  in  part."  Only  the 
"absolute"  idealists,  of  the  Fichtean  order,  go  so 
far  as  to  say  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  visible 
and  tangible  world  but  what  is  placed  there  either 
by  or  through  consciousness.  According  to  Kant 
there  is  something  at  least  mentionable  as  a  thing 
by  itself,  but  how  qualified  he  neither  knew  nor  ostens- 
ibly cared  to  know.  His  vocation  was  science,  not 
explanation,  and  science  as  a  fact  for  criticism,  re- 
gardless of  its  unknown  root.  But  the  more  mod- 
erate idealists  —  such  as  appreciate  the  reflections 
above  noticed  —  are  for  their  own  part  very  willing 
to  avoid  the  responsibility  of  consciously  making 
this  wondrous  world,  or  even  their  own  share  of  it, 
and  insist  that  there  must  be  somewhat  independent 
of  our  parasite  consciousness  —  some  objective  and 
historical  order,  in  the  presence  of  which,  and  ac- 
cording to  which,  consciousness  has  or  makes  or 
determines  these  phenomenal  revelations.  Either 
this  or  else  the  whole  fact  is  a  divine  miracle. 

The  static  and  dynamic  viewpoints  are  likely  to 
remain  in  contrast,  if  not  in  opposition,  as  long  as 
men  shall  countenance  the  possibility  of  a  particular 
and  of  a  universal  intelligence,  or  the  masque  of 
humanity  shall  continue.  That  we  live  in  the  new- 


IDEALISM  51 

ness  of  time,  that  creation  is  continuous,  that  things 
are  born  and  grow  old,  and  that  life  in  its  process  is 
vitalized  and  realized  by  sensations  of  immediate  and 
temporal  and  even  sacred  experience  —  all  new,  and 
with  the  prestige  of  a  divine  accomplishment  of  his- 
torical purpose  and  intrinsic  worth  —  it  were  stulti- 
fication to  deny;  the  denial  would  be  a  flippant  as- 
sertion that  we  are  but  such  stuff  as  dreams  are 
made  on  and  that  we  do  not  really  know,  or  feel, 
or  exist.  (Yet  to  deny  the  supremacy  of  reason  and 
Sufficient  Intelligence,  in  which  all  things  must  al- 
ways be  and  be  known  and  felt,  is  to  declare  a  con- 
dition in  which  existence  itself  would  be  so  pre- 
carious and  confused  as  to  be  hardly  worth  while, 
and  one  requiring  a  suspense  of  judgment  at  its  very 
best.) 

The  dilemma  is  the  same,  or  analogous,  between 
idealism  and  realism.  If  we  agree  with  Parmenides, 
that  "one  thing  are  being  and  thinking";  or  with 
Protagoras,  that  "man"  (as  intelligence)  "is  the 
measure  of  all  things" ;  or  with  Hegel  and  the  earlier 
Fichte  that  the  absolute  totality  is  the  self-relation 
of  "thought";  or  with  Kant,  that  our  external 
world  is  projected  from  (or  at  least  determined 
through)  our  personal  organization,  and  that  our 
objects  are  not  things  in  themselves;  or  finally,  with 
more  modern  critics,  that  there  are  no  things  in 
themselves  —  common  sense  and  sane  metaphysics 
alike  require  some  account  of  the  region  where  things 
at  least  seem  to  be,  and  some  sort  of  objective  and 
historical  order  of  reality  in  the  positions  before 
which,  and  some  way  determined  by  which,  the  in- 
dividual spirits  are  so  uniformly  given  the  same 


52  PLURIVERSE 

phenomena  in  the  same  place  and  time.  It  is  cer- 
tainly remarkable,  if  spirits  project  their  own  phe- 
nomena, that  in  any  given  presence  or  position  they 
all  project  the  same  apparitions,  in  the  same  stages 
of  growth  and  decay.  There  should  be  either  a 
unity  of  inspiration  from  behind  the  different 
spirits  or  else  there  is  presumably  an  objective  integ- 
rity before  them. 

For  example,  take  the  discovery  of  our  planet 
Neptune.  At  least  two  astronomers  had  realized 
that  in  the  objective  consistency  of  the  solar  system 
there  was  required  in  a  certain  position  the  gravita- 
tion proper  to  a  certain  bulk  of  matter.  The  prac- 
tical fact  of  the  "thing"  (Neptune)  had  never  ap- 
peared in  human  knowledge,  and  was  realized  only 
after  science  and  mechanism  had  caught  up  with  a 
reality  which  historically  preceded  them. 

These  contrasting  viewpoints  of  idealism  and  real- 
ism are  as  such  quite  as  defensive  severally  as  are 
those  of  the  static  and  dynamic,  and  it  is  but  fair 
to  materialism,  in  the  face  of  the  idealist  contention 
that  consciousness  posits  the  apparent  world,  to 
consider  occasionally  what  a  wonderful  world  it  is, 
and  what  a  staggering  proposition  to  the  average 
consciousness  its  production  or  even  its  comprehen- 
sion must  be.  We  have  no  use  for  the  truism  that 
each  man's  world  is  "all  the  world  to  him."  We  are 
not  solipsists ;  we  have  to  believe  in  other  people,  and 
in  history,  in  "alien  energy,"  and  a  venerable  estab- 
lishment at  which,  as  ephemeral  visitors,  we  may  take 
our  glimpse,  question  its  conditions,  its  origin,  pur- 
pose and  permanence,  and  inconsequently  pass  on. 

It  is  under  the  spur  of  these  or  like  considerations 


IDEALISM  53 

that  solid  people  like  Mr.  Spencer  revolt  at  "the  in- 
sanities of  idealism."  Yet  Spencer  himself,  when 
philosophising,  will  not  forego  these  anomalies.  In 
his  "Psychology"  he  says:  "What  we  are  conscious 
of  as  properties  of  matter,  even  down  to  its  weight 
and  resistance,  are  but  subjective  affections  pro- 
duced by  objective  agencies  which  are  unknown  and 
unknowable."  No  idealist  can  say  more ;  and  if  any 
property  of  matter  is  not  such  a  subjective  affection, 
but  a  reality  apart  from  subjective  spirit,  the  sen- 
sible world  may  exist  as  truly  without  experience  as 
within  it. 

But  the  sense  anomaly  will  persist.  Here  is  a 
great  painting  which  has  for  the  moment  but  an  un- 
cultured observer.  Now  I  am  free  and  prompt  to 
say  that  color,  form,  size,  tangibility  (and  even  all 
difference  whatsoever  if  you  please)  are  determina- 
tions of  conscious  spirit,  and  that  apart  from  such 
determinations  there  are  no  "things,"  any  more  than 
there  are  color  and  beauty  and  perspective  in  the 
night  on  the  hind  side  of  the  earth ;  something  must 
come  there  —  light  as  well  as  vision  —  to  afford  in- 
telligent experience;  still  the  ground  of  possible  ex- 
perience may  be  objectively  determined.  The  culture 
of  the  boor  is  the  measure  of  the  picture  only  for  him. 
The  picture  has  objective  potentiality  for  a  larger 
culture;  and  so  the  idealist,  with  his  one  dogmatic 
and  unquestionable  claim,  may  well  inquire,  if  reality 
evolves  "things"  only  according  to  his  subjective 
categories,  the  material  limiting,  if  not  the  formal 
constructing  element  of  experience  may  be  on  the 
objective  side  so  far  as  he  is  concerned.  A  critic 
might  say  to  the  average  perfunctory  idealist,  even 


54  PLURIVERSE 

as  he  might  to  the  boor  before  the  picture,  "you  see 
all  there  is  in  it  for  you,  and  ignore  what  a  funda- 
mental explanation  requires  of  its  position  —  in 
which  event  you  are  a  solipsist  and  a  bigot,  up  in  the 
tree  of  life  indeed,  but  sawing  off  the  limb  that  sup- 
ports you." 

Idealism  and  realism,  in  their  literature,  have 
shown  a  very  unnecessary  and  even  contemptuous 
antagonism.  The  idealist,  obsessed  with  his  right 
claim  that  objects  are  not  yet  "things"  in  them- 
selves, seems  to  the  realist  to  be  clearing  his  perspec- 
tive of  everything  save,  perhaps,  of  subjective  dream 
—  at  any  rate  that  he  makes  the  visible  world  "in 
itself"  unreal ;  whereas  the  true  idealist  should  mean 
no  such  fact ;  he  opposes  not  realism  but  materialism. 
Fully  admitting  the  external  reality,  he  philosophises 
the  making  of  the  reality,  claiming  that  experience  is 
not  wholly  due  to  mere  crude  stuff,  but  partly  as 
involving  soul  in  the  world,  and  possibly  God;  that 
experience  of  phenomena  is  a  composition  of  matter 
and  form,  and  that  the  matter  becomes  "things"  (out 
of  the  formless  dark)  only  in  the  presence  of  divine 
light  and  organic  vision.  But  idealism  has  been 
mainly  (and  perhaps  helplessly)  at  fault,  in  not 
scientifically  explaining  what  the  noumenal  ground, 
the  matter-side  of  the  exhibition,  is,  before  the  show, 
and  in  itself  —  what  it  is  that  impregnates  the  posi- 
tion in  the  objective  historical  order,  and  makes  it 
potential  of  the  same  "things"  to  all  organized 
spirits  alike  in  the  presence  of  the  same  position. 
Kant's  idealism  is  not  opposed  to  the  reality  of 
things  but  only  to  their  utter  materiality : 

"The  ideality  of  space  and  time  (and  of  their  con- 


IDEALISM  55 

tents)  leaves  the  truthfulness  of  our  experience  (as 
well  as  the  ground  or  cause  of  it)  quite  untouched, 
because  we  are  equally  sure  of  it,  whether  these 
forms  are  inherent  in  things  by  themselves,  or  by 
necessity  in  our  institutions  of  them  only." 

It  is  just  here  that  "absolute"  idealism  puts  in  its 
claim,  that  the  noumenal  side  of  reality  is  totally  im- 
plicated in  the  divine  subjectivity,  and  that  matter 
or  the  negative  shall  have  no  essential  credit  in  it- 
self, but  only  as  critically  posed  in  the  shape  of  a 
non-ego  in  the  ego  regarded  as  self-related  spirit. 
The  exploitation  of  this  idea  into  a  system,  involving 
the  working  world,  became  the  life  vocation  of  Fichte, 
and  continued  until  its  possibilities  and  as  well  his 
own  powers  were  hopelessly  exhausted,  and  ended  in 
his  renunciation  of  the  whole  problem,  in  his  "Voca- 
tion of  Man." 

"I  know  that  if  I  am  not  merely  to  play  another 
perplexing  game  with  this  system,  but  intend  really 
and  practically  to  adopt  it,  I  must  refuse  obedience 
to  the  voice  within  me.  ...  I  will  not  do  so.  I 
will  freely  accept  the  vocation  which  this  impulse  as- 
signs to  me.  I  will  restrict  myself  to  the  position  of 
natural  thought,  in  which  this  impulse  (faith)  places 
me,  and  cast  from  me  all  those  over-refined  and  subtle 
inquiries  which  alone  could  make  me  doubtful  of  its 
truth." 

(This  determination  changed  his  claim  of  knowl- 
edge as  self-relation,  or  knowledge  of  knowledge,  to 
simple  faith  in  Kant's  canon  of  pure  reason,  "I 
think.") 

Yet  malgre  this  renunciation  by  Fichte,  absolute 
idealism  is  the  only  goal  and  full  accomplishment  of 


56  PLURIVERSE 

dialectic  philosophy.  The  soul  cannot  pose  as  a 
mere  spectator  of  any  object,  however  real.  It  must 
draw  the  object  up  into  itself,  where  no  mere  copy 
or  representation  of  it  before  the  Highest  shall,  un- 
der the  name  of  "truth,"  pretend  to  absolute  science ; 
only  identity  with  the  object  can  be  trusted.  Truth, 
to  the  absolute,  is  a  false  pretence.  Its  very  name 
stamps  it  as  paper,  not  gold  which  cannot  be  substi- 
tuted, however  conventionally  represented.  The 
question  is  about  knowledge,  not  about  correct  or 
passable  likenesses  ;  and  truth  is  only  asserted  of  like- 
ness, not  of  identity  with  the  object.  Truth  can 
pertain  only  to  representation,  which  can  never  be 
equivalent  to  the  genuine  original.  It  is  a  word  too 
much,  unless  the  object  as  subject  is  self-related. 

I  do  not  observe  that  our  materialists,  who  are 
halted  by  the  spiritualists'  claim  that  no  matter  can 
be  refined  to  mind  (since  substance  cannot  serve  as 
relation),  have  made  full  use  of  these  phenomena  of 
light  and  color,  which  were  to  Plato  the  prime  won- 
ders of  the  world.  For  how  indeed  can  we  think  of 
light,  at  whose  presence  all  the  form  and  beauty  of 
the  world  appear,  as  less  than  half  of  what  we  call 
intelligence?  Without  it  "subjective"  vision  were 
impossible ;  we  cannot  imagine  color.  Nor  are  com- 
pound colors  chemical.  A  blue  ferruginous  sand  and 
a  yellow  silicons  sand  combined  will  make  a  green, 
although  all  the  particles  retain  their  integrity,  and 
can  be  separated  by  a  magnet.  And  the  common 
light,  which  plays  such  an  intellectual  part  in  the 
phenomena  of  beauty,  is  a  chemical  element ;  it  is  as 
rankly  material  as  any  acid,  as  well  appears  in  its 
action  upon  collodion  in  the  making  of  a  photo- 


IDEALISM  57 

graph,  and  in  its  mechanical  effects  upon  vegetation. 
The  distinction  shall  be  very  fine  between  such  sub- 
stance and  relation,  in  a  mechanical  green. 

All  our  conceptions  of  light  are  crude  and  imma- 
ture. How  inconsiderate  and  puerile  is  our  notion 
of  a  star :  a  bright  point,  sending  a  raj  to  us.  But 
is  it  not  at  the  same  time  sending  a  ray  to  every  point 
of  the  universe?  Not  a  singular  gleam,  but  a  limit- 
less globe  of  light  —  an  atmosphere,  yet  to  be  dis- 
tinguished among  a  myriad  of  such,  and  occupying 
the  same  space.  Our  star  is  but  one  of  its  infinite 
many  ness.  And  we  read  that  it  may  be  only  the 
ghost  of  a  star  at  last. 

If  the  apparition  of  the  star  be  really  a  ghost, 
there  is  a  globe  of  light  (assuming  it  to  have  had  a 
beginning)  in  which  a  dark  sphere  is  swiftly  expand- 
ing a  ring  of  light  which  still  contains  it. 

Frankly  speaking,  it  is  not  in  our  present  voca- 
tion to  explain,  even  if  we  easily  could,  the  confusion 
in  which  our  concession  to  the  plausibility  of  Ideal- 
ism may  seem  to  have  involved  our  discussion.  The 
purpose  has  been  rather  to  philosophically  show 
wherein  philosophy  has  failed.  And  just  here  par- 
ticularly should  appear  its  shortcoming,  as  having 
not  clearly  distinguished  between  realism  and  "ma- 
terialism" —  a  notion  beyond  the  possibility  of 
thought. 

Kant  took  pains  to  acknowledge  and  give  warn- 
ing that  an  idealist  proper  does  not  deny  the  reality 
of  what  he  depreciates  as  mere  phenomena  (to  whose 
basic  stuff  he  was  presently  indifferent),  but  in- 
sists upon  the  intellectual  and  relational  element  in 
its  composition.  Said  Kant :  "It  must  not  be  sup- 


58  PLURIVERSE 

posed  that  an  idealist  is  one  who  denies  the  existence 
of  external  objects  of  the  senses;  all  he  does  is  to 
deny  that  the  existence  is  known  by  immediate  per- 
ception, and  to  infer  that  we  can  never  become  per- 
fectly certain  of  their  reality  by  any  experience 
whatever." 

Kant  himself  was  stoically  indifferent  to  the  un- 
settling consequences  of  his  doctrine.  If  it  made 
knowledge  solipsism  —  if  the  things  of  this  world 
are  only  as  they  are  in  spiritual  appreciation  that 
may  be  commingled  of  conception,  memory,  dream 
and  illusion  —  he  would  but  fall  back  upon  his  sure 
method,  and  warn  the  acolyte  of  the  ineluctable  nec- 
essity of  empirical  experience,  and  of  the  fact  that 
only  the  accompanying  assurance  of  perceptive  sense 
could  make  a  whole  of  knowledge. 

When  the  materialist  says  then,  "these  things  are 
real,  whether  observed  or  not,  and  are  no  less  real  in 
the  dark  on  the  hind  side  of  the  earth,"  the  idealist 
may  well  inquire  for  his  meaning,  not  only  as  to  the 
"things"  but  as  to  reality  itself.  For  consider  the 
things  as  to  their  sizes :  the  materialist  will  not 
long  persist  in  the  integrity  of  these  sizes,  but 
if  he  does  not  hold  the  things  to  their  apparent 
sizes  they  will  vanish;  they  have  none  of  his 
"matter"  if  they  have  no  determined  size;  all 
that  he  can  claim  of  matter  without  color,  form, 
tangibility,  and  above  all,  difference  —  all  of  which 
we  have  found  determined  by  organs  —  falls  into 
the  curiosity  of  what  causes  the  mental  experi- 
ence, and  matter,  as  dead,  negative  stuff,  gives  little 
promise  of  explanation. 

It  will  be  but  courtesy  on  our  part  to  kneel  in 


IDEALISM  59 

spirit  and  confess  the  fatuity  of  any  presumption  of 
having  made  explanation  easier.  Newton  may  find 
a  pretty  pebble  on  the  shore,  still  lost  in  wonder  as 
to  what  the  great  ocean  covers.  We  rather  like  the 
notion,  shallow  though  it  be,  of  primordial  forms  in 
the  elements  of  things,  which  crystallize  readily  of 
themselves:  it  spares  a  little  of  anxious  intention. 
And  we  are  comforted  by  the  rupture  of  aristocratic 
heredity,  when  we  see  that  a  divine  descent  through 
the  line  of  the  acorn  is  not  absolutely  necessary  in 
the  lineage  of  the  oak :  since,  as  we  have  noticed,  both 
root  and  branch  of  the  same  plant  may  have  grown 
out  of  its  environment,  and  represented  an  illegiti- 
mate succession.  But  after  evolution  has  con- 
gratulated itself  on  its  main  stay  of  the  survival  of 
fitness,  through  the  push  of  self-love  —  seen  the 
mere  paws  get  fingers  and  indurated  nails,  finally 
reinforced  by  the  afterthought  of  a  thumb,  to  en- 
close (in  order  to  climb  a  vine,  for  instance)  ;  after 
it  has  seen  the  blind  anxiety  of  the  pushing  worm 
wear  through  the  skin  to  a  focus  so  sensitive  and 
responsive  to  the  interest  within  that  it  has  developed 
a  lens  and  can  really  see,  realized  the  cordage  and 
leverage  of  the  bones  and  joints  as  time  and  the  vital 
push  have  accomplished  the  creature  for  his  posi- 
tion —  all  this  and  so  much  more  —  then  to  see  the 
wonder  of  all  wonders,  the  recreation  of  the  species 
—  to  see  the  mere  orgasm  of  the  cock  and  the  hen, 
drawing  from  all  the  streams  which  out  of  the  wild 
time  delivered  this  creature,  deposit  in  an  egg  a  white 
speck  in  which  the  whole  history  is  recorded  in  a 
potentiality  so  vital  that  mere  impersonal  heat  may 
in  twenty-one  days  render  it  actual  as  a  bird  of 


60  PLURIVERSE 

paradise  —  there  philosophy,  as  we  regard  it,  should 
consent  to  one  very  important  fact:  it  is  most  un- 
likely that  any  man  (at  best  any  man  that  we  have 
known  or  heard  of)  has  in  his  intelligence  any  cos- 
mic relation  to  this  world,  or  as  an  inheriting  son 
has  any  unique  claim  to  the  estate.  Yet  that  he 
may  have  a  glimpse  of  the  record  we  surely  know. 

Another  thought  which  may  be  a  part  of  philoso- 
phy hereafter  is  that  time  must  be  regarded  as  a 
dynamic  principle.  These  wonders  of  history  and 
development  argue  so  long  a  process,  give  a  sense 
of  so  much  being  due  to  process,  that  when  we  re- 
flect that  time  as  such  can  have  no  beginning,  we 
seem  driven  to  regard  it  as  in  itself  fertile,  objective 
and  concrete,  and  to  conceive  Idealism  as  a  private 
affair.  A  cultured  appreciation  finds  the  world  so 
utterly  beyond  finite  comprehension  that,  taken  as 
a  subjective  effect,  it  would  incur  a  contempt  that 
is  due  only  to  the  subject  himself.  While  Idealism, 
for  its  ingenuity,  will  be  ever  safe  from  the  charge 
of  "insanity,"  it  is  most  likely  that  the  faith  in  ob- 
jective reality  will  prevail,1  and  that  the  ultimate 

i  There  was  a  piquant  and  memorable  controversy,  lasting 
more  than  twenty  years,  between  Thomas  Hobbes  (author  of 
"The  Leviathan,"  etc.)  and  certain  of  the  professors  of  Oxford 
University,  over  the  possibility  of  the  quadrature  of  the  circle, 
which  has  a  metaphysical  interest  as  involving  the  relative  au- 
thority of  sense  and  understanding,  and  so  liable  to  personal 
predilection  and  preference.  The  discussion  was  at  first  con- 
ducted in  Latin,  with  classic  dignity  and  decorum,  but  waxing 
hot  in  consequence  of  opposing  viewpoints  —  so  hot  that  Mr. 
Hobbes,  arguing  from  the  sensuous  and  popular  side,  did  not 
hesitate  at  calling  his  opponents  not  only  fools  but  liars  —  he 
decided  that  he  could  more  roundly  abuse  them  in  their  native 
tongue,  and  continued  the  contest  in  English,  whereat  the  Dons 


IDEALISM  61 

duplexity  will  be  of  time  and  space  as  respectively 
male  and  female  principles. 

Having  granted  all  that  may  be  rightly  claimed 
in  Hegel's  definition  of  idealism,  we  have  to  notice 
what  it  lacks  of  explanation,  in  the  large  discourse 
of  reason. 


rather  wittily,  if  not  very  elegantly,  protested  that  he  had 
resorted  to  Billingsgate  because  "he  had  not  the  right  Latin 
for  stinking  fish." 

(This,  by  the  way,  was  a  rather  disingenuous  claim  of  such 
thorough  scholars,  for  Hobbes'  translations  of  both  Latin  and 
Greek  have  been  generally  approved.  Pope  declared  that  his 
versions  of  Homer  and  Thucydides  were  the  best  ever  written. 
Hobbes'  idiosyncracy,  if  such  it  was,  is  best  expressed  by  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  as  his  inability  to  discriminate  between  the 
intellectual  and  the  emotive  faculties  of  man,  as  determining 
metaphysical  certainty.) 

It  was  this  peculiarity,  perhaps,  that  led  to  Mr.  Hobbes'  final 
comment  upon  the  refinements  of  his  adversaries,  that  "if  he 
had  been  as  learned  as  they  were  he  would  probably  have 
known  no  more  than  they  did." 

This  jibe  appears  superficially  no  more  than  a  retort  of 
common  sense  and  experience  upon  highbrow  technicality  and 
finesse;  but  it  is  this  and  much  more. 

It  was  a  characteristic  saying  of  Kant  that  we  may  think 
certain  facts  while  yet  we  do  not  know  them.  This  he  would 
call  transcendental  thinking,  wherein  words  and  symbols  are 
assumed  as  concrete  realities.  Language  is  an  invention  and 
a  growth,  which  has  not  yet  attained  the  limits  of  insight 
and  intuition;  but  at  the  same  time  the  mind  can  disport  with 
mere  conceptions  which  have  no  corroborating  perceptions  of 
sensuous  experience  —  although  according  to  Kant  (and  Aris- 
totle as  well)  a  whole  of  thought  must  have  both  matter  and 
form  —  the  sensuous  experience  being  taken  up  into  intellec- 
tual forms,  and  so  made  a  whole  of  knowledge. 

But  while  Kant  plainly  instanced  the  transcendental  ex- 
travagance wherein  we  may  verbally  think  what  we  do  not 
concretely  know  (making  play  upon  words  as  real  things),  he 
did  not  remark  upon  the  converse  fact  that  we  may  really 
know  what,  for  lack  of  the  appropriate  language,  we  cannot 


62  PLURIVERSE 

When  the  idealist,  as  a  philosopher  or  observer, 
finds  Consciousness  (a  name  in  capitals)  "positing 
this  world,"  wherein  is  he  the  wiser?  Intelligence  as 
such  can  but  accept  what  is  given  to  it,  and  there 


articulately  think.  I  suspect  it  was  as  exploiting  one  of  these 
unspeakable  surds,  or  as  giving  it  rational  interpretation,  that 
Hobbes  claimed,  if  not  the  technical  quadrature  of  the  circle, 
a  pragmatical  value  "just  as  good." 

Hobbes'  proposition  assumes  to  show  the  tangent  that  is 
equivalent  to  any  given  arc,  and  so  to  determine  the  area  of  a 
curvilineal  figure  in  quadrilateral  form;  and  in  doing  this  he 
would  encounter  an  incapacity  of  mathematics  to  express  an 
obvious  geometrical  space.  His  demonstration  is  of  exceeding 
length,  and  of  troublesome  intricacy  to  the  layman,  and  al- 
though we  have  its  language,  the  appropriate  drawing  or 
diagram  seems  to  be  lacking  from  American  libraries.  One 
can  only  conjecture,  therefore,  whether  or  not  he  made  good, 
or  in  what  sense ;  but  such  a  claim  is  obviously  an  intrenchment 
upon  the  "fourth  dimension." 

Let  us  first  approve,  by  collating  geometry  and  mathematics, 
the  converse  of  Kant's  very  pregriant  assertion  that  we  may 
think  what  we  do  not  know,  to  wit,  that  we  may  know  what 
we  cannot  articulately  think,  our  conceptual  and  formal  mathe- 
matics failing  of  terms  that  should  respond  to,  or  accord  with 
our  geometrical  perception,  in  this  instance  to  the  side  of  a 
double  square. 

The  diagonal  of  any  given  square  is  equiv- 
alent to  the  side  of  a  square  of  twice  its 
area. 

In  the  figure  the  diagonal  a,  of  the  square 
be,  is  a  side  of  the  double  square  de,  for  the 
triangle  /  is  half  of  the  square  be,  and  a 
quarter  of  the  square  de,  which  obviously 
has  twice  the  area  of  the  square  be. 

Now,  mathematically,  the  square  be  is  to 
the  square  de  (its  double)  as  one  is  to  two; 
and    a    side    of    be    is    to    the    diagonal    a 
(a  side  of  de)  as  one  is  to  that  which,  squared,  would  equal 
two  —  that  is,  to  the  square-root  of  two,  expressed  thus:-v/2. 
Or  similarly,  if  the  side  of  the  smaller  square  be  taken  as  2 
(which  squared  is  4)  the  side  of  the  double  square  would  be 


IDEALISM  63 

remains  inscrutable  the  ingenious  and  productive 
power  which  consciousness  can  only  be  said  to  rep- 
resent. The  worth  of  things  being  transferred  to 
consciousness  affords  no  explanation  or  account  of 


a  number  which,  squared,  would  equal  8  —  it  would  be  the 
square-root  of  8;  i.e.,  that  which  squared  would  equal  8. 

But  our  mathematics  afford  no  such  number  as,  squared, 
would  equal  either  2  or  8.  We  can  with  decimals  approximate 
ever  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  square  roots  of  these  numbers, 
but  the  process  is  in  vain,  because  no  digit,  squared,  produces 
a  cipher.  Whether  some  other  than  our  decimal  system  might 
thwart  the  infinite  regressus  of  these  mathematical  surds  is 
a  question  for  professors;  it  is  enough  for  our  purpose  here  to 
see  in  the  diagram  the  result  of  a  proportion  which  we  cannot 
mathematically  express.  We  may,  as  a  modus  Vivendi,  for 
practical  purposes,  wrap  the  problem  of  the  infinite  regressus 
in  a  symbol  (as  -v/2),  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  "truth"  of 
the  matter  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  "bottomless  well"  of 
Democritus.  Still  it  is  readily  obvious  that  a  controversy  might 
arise  over  the  relative  sufficiency  of  percepts  and  concepts  of 
the  same  object,  since  the  diagonal  of  a  square,  taken  as  rep- 
resentative of  the  double  square,  is  as  such  demonstrable  geo- 
metrically, but  inexpressible  or  surd  mathematically. 

This  fact  affords  the  hint  that  in  other  and  more  important 
instances  sensuous  intuition  may  transcend  intelligible  expres- 
sion. Reverting  to  Mr.  Hobbes  and  his  proposition,  in  the 
absence  of  his  diagram,  I  can  but  conjecture  that  he  used  some 
such  geometrical  value  in  defiance  of  the  professors'  mathe- 
matics. For  he  says  in  his  final  comment:  "I  have  used  a 
more  natural,  a  more  geometrical,  and  a  more  perspicuous 
method  in  the  search  of  this  so  difficult  a  problem  than  you 
have  done  in  your  Arithmetica  Infinitorum."  But  I  have 
to  think  that  any  angular  equivalent  of  the  circle  is  debarred 
by  an  inexorable  proportion,  which  I  will  formulate  in  the 
following  theorem:  The  area  of  any  figure  is  to  its  perimeter 
as  the  uniformity  of  its  extension.  It  is  the  uniformity  of 
dimension  diametrically  that  appreciates  either  surface  or 
solid.  It  is  uniformity  that  constitutes  what  is  called,  more 
or  less  in  a  hopeless  jest,  the  "fourth  dimension."  Perhaps 
we  may  sufficiently  illustrate  this  fact  without  diagrams. 


64  PLURIVERSE 

them,  either  as  to  their  coming  or  to  their  order  or 
connection.  Even  if  consciousness  were  original 
instead  of  merely  a  gift,  its  criticism  but  opens  the 
way  to  fundamental  explanation. 

However,  the  discomfiture  of  its  devotees  will  not 
make  idealism  less  than  the  most  startling  discovery 
of  the  human  race. 


Conceive  a  square,  six  by  six  inches,  and  beside  it  a  parallelo- 
gram, seven  inches  by  five.  The  two  figures  have  an  equal 
perimetrical  straight  lineage  of  24  inches,  and  four  equivalent 
right  angles;  yet  the  area  of  the  square  is  36  square  inches, 
while  that  of  the  parallelogram  is  but  35.  Some  other  quality 
than  mere  extension  must  determine  the  containing  capacity 
of  this  24  inches  of  lineage.  Again,  measure  with  a  tapeline 
any  circular  disc;  a  dinner  plate  will  serve;  then  cut  from 
cardboard  a  square  of  the  same  perimeter,  and  impose  it  upon 
the  disc.  While  the  corners  of  the  square  will  extend  beyond 
the  circle,  the  area  of  its  extrusion  will  obviously  fail  to  com- 
pensate the  lunes  apparent  between  the  circle  and  the  sides 
of  the  square;  the  discrepancy  is  even  greater  than  that  be- 
tween the  square  and  the  parallelogram.  In  the  same  way, 
a  sphere  of  plastic  matter,  pressed  into  the  form  of  a  cube, 
would  require  a  more  extensive  receptacle  to  contain  it. 

We  should  learn  from  these  experiments  that  form  is  an 
element  of  extensity;  that  excentricity  of  outline  involves  a 
diminution  of  areal  content;  and  that  the  circle,  in  the  per- 
fection of  its  uniformity,  has  a  dimension  which  any  possible 
angularity  must  degrade  and  diminish. 

Whether  the  first  circle  was  a  concept  or  a  percept  —  whether 
some  genius  thought  of  a  point  central  in  a  horizon  of  points, 
or  a  caveman  twirled  it  with  a  forked  stick  in  the  sand  —  is 
likely  to  remain  a  question. 


CHAPTER  111 
MONISM 

MONISM,  popularly  intending  the  unity  of 
totality,  might  be  defined  as  obsession  of 
finite  limitation  —  a  fate  of  the  planet-born 
or  orbicular  intelligence.  In  philosophy  it  implies 
egotism  and  self-relation. 

As  a  culture  it  is  incapable  of  any  direct  or  tan- 
gent thought  or  outlook,  its  expectation  reverting 
ever  to  the  subjective  interest  and  viewpoint.  Com- 
passing no  object  in  its  mere  freedom  to  advance,  it 
orients  its  vision  as  if  to  freedom  itself  as  a  property 
of  its  own  nature,  rather  than  the  objective  extensity 
of  the  vulgar  space. 

Instead  of  recognizing  everywhere  as  a  here,  it  lo- 
cates space  behind  the  mental  eye  instead  of  before 
it  —  finds  the  only  answer  to  its  outward  quest  — 
a  quasi  other  to  itself,  and  says  with  Brahma,  "When 
me  they  fly  I  am  the  wings." 

Its  burthen  is  ever  the  "universe,"  exploited  by 
some  theological  cosmography  which  leaves  it  but  a 
limited  object  in  an  unlimited  field.  It  will  of  course 
ignore  the  anomaly  herein  cited  —  that  of  the  stars 
as  a  limited  set  in  a  limitless  space  that  hungers  for 
exploration  and  occupancy. 

A  mere  makeshift  in  metaphysics,  its  psychological 
65 


66  PLURIVERSE 

plausibility  renders  it  the  most  alluring  recourse  of 
speculative  thought. 

For  a  treatise  on  monism  one  may  start  bravely 
from  the  saying  of  Philolaus,  "One  is  made  by  limit" 
(plausibly  a  circle  then,  or  a  sphere),  and  forthwith 
conclude  that  all  cannot  be  one;  for  any  such  one, 
however  great,  leaves  a  margin  unoccupied;  it  does 
not  fill  the  canvas.  Or  if  regarded  theoretically  and 
rationally,  rather  than  pictorially,  or  imaginatively, 
such  a  one  cannot  be  all,  because  comprehension,  as 
of  all,  must  include  that  which  comprehends,  and  the 
observer  of  the  fact  is  not  yet  included  in  its  obser- 
vation. 

But  this  conclusion  will  be  confronted  by  the 
idealist  with  the  undermining  charge  that  it  is  a 
judgment  based  not  upon  reason  but  upon  imperti- 
nent imagination.  He  will  say  that  the  margin  by 
which  the  one  is  pictorially  exceeded  is  due  to  a 
false  pretense  of  space  being  objective,  instead  of 
being  subjective  —  which  it  certainly  (or  also)  is; 
space  (in  his  sense)  is  not  extension,  but  merely  room 
or  mental  freedom  to  extend;  so  that  the  one  (he 
assumes)  can  be  founded  centrally,  or  wholly  within 
and  related  to  itself  alone;  and  what  imagination 
regards  as  space  and  margin  shall  be  but  the  free- 
dom of  the  supreme  or  absolute  subject ;  the  required 
limit  of  its  oneness  shall  be  self-determination,  and 
its  unity  and  universality  shall  be  the  perfection  of 
a  harmonious  whole.  Infinity  is  but  a  false  great- 
ness :  "that  that  which  is  should  be  infinite  is  not 
permitted." 

Then  as  to  one  failing  of  all  because  its  observer 


MONISM  67 

is  not  included  in  its  comprehension  —  assuming  that 
comprehension  as  universal  must  include  the  being 
that  comprehends  —  the  charge  confronts  the  main 
ground  of  transcendental  idealism,  namely,  that  all 
knowledge  contains  or  includes  self-knowledge,  and 
that  any  totality  is  necessarily  self -related,  subject 
and  object  at  once.  The  limit  of  the  One  of  Philolaus 
is  thus  assumed  as  the  self-determined,  and  the 
imagined  margin  is  resolved  into  the  infinite  liberty 
of  the  free  subject. 

(It  will,  of  course,  be  seen  that  a  universe  thus 
established  from  within,  with  no  regard  to  outer 
space,  would  not  hinder  the  existence  of  other  uni- 
verses ;  and  the  claim  of  its  being  the  universe  would 
be  solipsism.  The  One  of  Fichte  and  Hegel  and  Har- 
ris, the  absolute  ego,  is  such  a  centre,  whose  outlook 
or  infinite  is  potential  in  freedom.) 

These  are  the  two  chief  problems  of  philosophy :  to 
get  the  world  into  an  absolute  whole,  self-compre- 
hended, and  to  prove  that  knowledge  is  what  it  pre- 
tends to  be;  i.  e.  that  as  knowledge  it  knows  itself 
as  it  knows  other  facts  —  comprehends  its  own  being 
as  essentially  its  own  ground.  Our  safety,  in  dread 
of  fate,  requires  the  assurance  proper  to  this  infor- 
mation ;  and  the  cogitation  of  its  possibility  has  been 
the  main  industry  of  modern  philosophy  —  occa- 
sionally satisfied  with  results  which  have  invariably 
been  outgrown  and  discarded. 

The  average  citizen  is  content  to  believe  that  he  is 
at  least  so  far  whole  and  original  as  to  be  socially 
responsible;  but  those  whom  we  prefer  as  the  great 
thinkers  of  the  race  have  decided  otherwise  —  not 
but  that  man  shall  render  unto  Cassar  the  things 


68  PLURIVERSE 

which  are  Caesar's,  but  that  for  or  against  the  gov- 
ernment of  God,  "of  himself  he  can  do  nothing." 

The  capital  advantage  hypothecated  in  monism 
is  that  it  makes  a  "universe,"  symmetrical,  depend- 
able and  manageable,  all  within  reasonable  bounds; 
but  unfortunately  it  implies  a  "universal  intelli- 
gence," which,  if  unlimited,  or  unfinite,  could  hold  no 
relation  to  personality  as  we  conceive  and  represent 
it.  The  "universal  ego"  of  Fichte  and  Hegel  is  not 
like  the  human  ego,  nor  fitly  suggested  thereby.  It  is 
posed  as  a  formal,  transcendental,  quasi  vision  or 
fetich,  an  institution,  an  enfolding  atmosphere,  coun- 
tenanced as  a  logical  necessity  —  a  concept  which, 
as  Kant  would  say,  has  no  staminal  substantiation 
in  a  possible  perception.  And  being  sole,  it  must 
have  all  its  sufficiency  in  self-relation ;  there  is  none 
to  know  or  sustain  or  reflect  it  but  itself,  subject  and 
object  at  once  (if  ever),  but  for  Hegel  by  degrees 
and  process  which  Fichte's  instant  insight  fore- 
stalled. 

Against  this  scheme  has  been  opposed  the  opinion 
that  a  universal  reason  is  not  a  reason  at  all,  and 
that  universal  personality  is  more  than  contradic- 
tory, in  fact  absurd,  although  announced  by  Hegel 
as  "the  highest,  steepest  thought." 

In  lieu  of  a  managing  personality  modern  thought 
has  conceived  of  necessary  laws,  under  which  what 
we  call  "design"  should  appear  as  due  to  an  appre- 
ciation at  the  end  or  accomplishment  of  things, 
rather  than  to  an  intention  at  their  beginning.  In 
other  words,  that  the  requisite  necessities  of  mechan- 
ism are  less  mysterious  or  astounding  than  the  con- 
tradictions involved  in  a  primary  and  self-related 


MONISM  69 

intelligence.  We  know  secondary  intelligence  as  an 
empirical  fact,  but  its  primacy  or  originality  would 
merely  double  the  wonder,  as  calling  for  similar 
necessities  to  avert  its  logical  contradictions.  A 
necessary  machine  is  as  plausible  as  a  self-related 
mind;  for  a  principle  of  reason  can  have  no  contra- 
diction. Materialism  holds  that  if  knowledge  is  not 
essentially  grounded,  is  not  self-related,  mind-stuff 
is  no  more  explanatory  than  matter;  that  God  be- 
comes but  a  convenient  limb  or  fetich  whereon  to 
unburden  the  Mystery.  The  wilds  of  nature  are  as 
fertile  and  luminous  as  are  the  Elysian  fields.  [We 
recall  the  scientist  who  grieved  that  he  could  not 
find  within  him  the  God  whom  he  recognized  every- 
where without.] 

I  can  but  think  that  monism  will  come  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  needless  barrier  to  explanation  —  a 
mere  mirage  of  limitation,  a  projection  of  our  ego- 
tism, through  a  false  psychology  of  personality  as 
an  original  principle.  There  is  no  louder  voice 
from  antiquity  than  that  which  declares  that  One 
is  made  by  limit ;  and  there  can  be  nothing  more  con- 
vincing to  the  average  thinker  than  that  any  One  is 
transcended  as  but  a  spot  on  the  true  universal. 
Let  there  be  gods  and  gods  in  the  "lower  cases," 
the  universe  will  not  stand  for  the  capital  G.  The 
true  universe  is  too  great  for  a  "personal"  God. 
The  margin  beyond  the  One  (even  as  liberty)  is 
an  abyss  wherein  the  bats  of  chance  wing  blindly 
in  dreams  of  potential  cataclysm  and  disaster. 

The  management  and  comprehension  of  wholeness 
seem  to  be  the  main  difficulties  of  explanation. 
When  we  are  once  rid  of  these,  which  to  any  second 


70  PLURIVERSE 

thought  are  clearly  impossible  —  when  we  frankly 
admit  that  there  must  be  an  everywhere  as  plaus- 
ible as  any  here  —  we  are  freed  from  the  exaction 
of  management  by  impossible  comprehension,  and 
are  at  liberty  to  look  for  principle,  fertility,  ex- 
planation in  the  monads  and  centres  of  the  Midst, 
where  everything  for  itself  must  be.  One  may  then 
"look  into  his  heart  and  write."  We  may  possibly 
find  the  monads  giving  explanation  without  compre- 
hension —  find  a  vast  democracy  working  by  im- 
mediate contracts  and  local  managements  of  in- 
dividual energy,  regardless  of  any  autocratic 
heredity,  or  any  cosmic  process  or  purpose.  Get 
rid  of  this  impossible  wholeness  and  the  impossible 
"purpose  of  eternity,"  and  we  may  find  in  heart  and 
life  something  so  noble,  so  willful,  so  self-sacrificing 
and  magnanimous  in  suffering,  that  our  most  criti- 
cal curiosity  shall  call  it  in  itself  worth  while,  suffi- 
cient for  being  —  in  fine,  pure  Cause. 

It  may  well  be  that  this  bewildering  immensity, 
which  yet  is  not  a  whole  nor  demanding  treatment 
as  a  whole,  has  exaggerated  the  dignity  or  profund- 
ity of  sufficient  explanation.  The  Mystery  may  be 
more  homely  and  secular  than  our  fear  and  ignor- 
ance have  come  to  regard  it.  Perhaps  "He  is  not 
far." 

What  we  would  infer  is  that  the  notion  of  whole- 
ness, as  of  a  One,  throws  all  the  hope  of  explana- 
tion into  the  possibility  of  a  universal  personality, 
which  could  be  one  only  from  the  inside,  by  solipsis. 
Experience  teaches  us  the  possibility  of  monads, 
Ones  of  quasi  original  power,  which,  while  not  fully 
explanatory,  still  carry  the  Mystery  as  feasibly 


MONISM  71 

as  a  God  may  carry  it ;  but  a  universal  One  is  ob- 
jectively impossible,  save  in  a  transcendental  con- 
cept of  pure  solipsism. 

The  conception  of  a  continuous  democratic  many, 
eve^where  as  here,  vacates  the  contradiction  of  a 
universal  objective  One,  and  is  embarrassed  only  by 
the  familiar  Mystery  which  all  intelligent  monads 
are  to  themselves.  And  this  Mystery  I  have  tenta- 
tively presumed  to  alleviate  (adopting  as  the  canon 
of  pure  reason  the  empirical  "I  think"),  in  the 
self-respect  of  some  great  emotion  or  agonism  that 
should  feel  itself  worth  while —  as  when  Ajax  would 
defy  the  lightning,  or  when  Job  should  curse  God 
and  die.  The  conjecture  seems  to  open  a  vista 
which,  pursued  with  resolution,  might  lead  toward 
finite  satisfaction,  if  not  to  explanation. 

The  miracle  of  originality  or  principle  is  no  more 
astonishing,  theoretically,  in  a  monad  than  in  a 
god.  We  are  personally  conscious  and  accustomed 
to  a  certain  amount  of  "creation" ;  and  we  should  be 
well  contented  in  finding  the  world  at  large  so  ac- 
counted for ;  but  when  the  difficulties  of  universality 
cut  us  off  from  that  satisfaction,  the  immense  aggre- 
gations and  consistent  systems  of  things  still  get  no 
explanation  from  the  energy  and  intelligence  of 
mere  monads.  The  stars  for  instance,  and  their 
revolutions:  men  do  their  work,  making  cities,  as 
the  coral  insects  build  great  reefs,  and  the  instant 
efficiency  is  in  some  degree  satisfactory;  but  even 
ignoring  the  One  whole,  or  assuming  it  as  impossible, 
there  are  lesser  wholes  too  great  to  be  accounted  for 
by  individual  and  unconcerted  agency.  There  seems 


72  PLURIVERSE 

to  be  required  some  fitness  in  the  elements  of  things, 
by  which  mere  aggregation  should  result  in  admir- 
able forms  and  harmonious  masses  and  movements 
—  possibly  to  be  countenanced  by  the  concession  of 
all-enduring  time. 

To  faintly  illustrate  the  intention  here:  Most 
people  have  seen  what  are  called  "alum  baskets" 
(rock  candy  is  of  the  same  nature).  They  are 
forms  automatically  constructed  or  determined  upon 
cottoned  wire  immersed  in  a  solution  of  alum  or 
sugar.  Regular  cubes,  usually  about  a  quarter  of 
an  inch  in  diameter,  accumulate  around  the  frame 
of  the  structure,  until  each  wire  is  loaded  with 
crystals,  and  averages  about  an  inch  and  a  half 
in  thickness  —  the  whole  capable  of  any  fanciful 
design.  The  philosophical  spirit,  curious  as  to 
what  or  who  produces  these  beautiful  and  wonder- 
ful things,  is  loth  to  sing  "the  hand  that  made  us 
is  divine";  for  they  are  not  divinely  worth  while,  at 
least,  a  more  mechanical  reference  would  be  accept- 
able. What  hinders  the  thought  then,  that  the 
planes  and  angles  of  the  elemental  atoms  of  the 
solution  are  such  that  the  aggregation  gets  its 
form  from  the  adjustment,  through  a  uniform  at- 
traction, of  all  the  planes  and  angles?  The  wholes, 
then,  would  thus  be  simplified,  so  far  as  their  great- 
ness is  concerned,  by  reference  to  the  mechanism  of 
the  elements.  A  multiverse  might  thus  be  construed, 
though  a  universe  were  impossible. 

So  in  the  growth  of  a  plant.  If  we  consider  the 
sap  within  it  as  rising,  by  the  general  expansion  of 
heat,  in  tubes  of  a  valvular  formation,  which  hold 
all  they  get,  against  the  cooling  process  of  the 


MONISM  73 

night,  and  then,  in  the  returning  light  and  heat, 
exude  the  sap  into  the  similarly  crystal  atmosphere 
at  the  ends  of  the  fibres  and  tendrils,  we  may  indeed 
admire  the  grown  result,  but  we  look  at  it  as  rather 
scientifically  than  spiritually  mysterious.  We  see 
beautiful  ferns  produced  in  this  manner;  and  then, 
on  a  frosty  morning,  we  may  see  the  nightly  dew  on 
the  pavement  for  miles  and  miles  thrown  into  pre- 
cisely such  fronds  and  ferns.  Our  science  in  the 
premises,  while  it  does  not  fully  explain  as  yet, 
abates  the  necessity  of  the  superstitious  personal 
intention;  it  reduces  the  individual  peculiarity  to  a 
generalization;  it  gives  the  wonder  of  the  many  a 
trend  toward  a  single  however  mysterious  principle. 

Why  are  we  so  egotistic  and  suburban  as  to  re- 
quire for  our  mental  environment  a  "universe"  as 
limited  to  unity,  rather  than  a  multiverse  of  cos- 
mopolitan, democratic  and  uncentred  continuity? 
The  rims  of  the  philosopher's  spectacles  seem  to  de- 
termine a  monism  in  his  outlook.  It  would  seem  a 
not  difficult  viewpoint  to  attain,  that  there  are  no 
monistic  limits  to  the  world ;  that  everything,  great 
or  small,  is  a  monad  in  the  Midst,  not  of  a  universe 
but  a  pluriverse  of  centres  having  no  circumference 
or  comprehension.  We  regard  this  as  the  unques- 
tionable fact ;  its  denial  results  in  metaphysical  con- 
fusion. No  one  claims  a  limit  to  space,  yet  finite 
sophistication  keeps  limiting  existence  to  an  All,  or 
a  One,  not  considering  how  these  notions  antagonize 
such  an  unlimited  space.  Egoism  must  have  all 
things  under  a  central  and  personal  control,  a 
mental  comprehension  of  an  admitted  infinite! 

Certainly  the  cosmos  is  a  problem  of  management ; 


74  PLURIVERSE 

the  appearance  of  design  is  to  be  accounted  for  as 
best  it  may ;  but  I  shall  show,  on  positively  scientific 
grounds,  that  limited  matter  —  as  in  a  set  or  system 
of  stars  —  is  impossible  under  either  physical  or 
metaphysical  gravitation. 

THE  MIDST 

As  in  Aristotle  nature  and  becoming  are  by  the 
graduation  of  matter  into  form,  or  of  being  into 
knowing,  the  actual  is  ever  at  a  turning  point,  the 
Midst.  Our  ordinary  use  of  the  word  "universal" 
is  for  the  inference  of  greatness ;  it  is  for  telescopic 
rather  than  microscopic  extension.  But  as  we  must 
see,  in  the  demonstration  of  the  relativity  and  ideal- 
ity of  size  by  the  microscope,  our  determinations  of 
size  are  limited  by  material  agents ;  our  ordinary 
Midst,  or  actuality,  is  contingent  upon  our  inven- 
tional  progress,  variously  with  the  telescope  and  the 
microscope. 

(While  our  greatest  telescopes  still  leave  the  fixed 
stars  so  far  that  the  orb  and  its  orbit  are  focused 
as  but  a  motionless  point,  with  the  "infinite"  still 
beyond,  so  the  best  microscope  still  raises  the  ques- 
tion whether  in  the  infinitesimal  direction,  there  is 
any  creature  so  small  but  another  creature  lives 
upon  it ;  does  the  infinite  divisibility  of  matter  carry 
the  infinite  divisibility  of  life  and  soul?  On  the 
other  hand,  does  the  illimitability  of  space  exclude 
the  possibility  of  personality  as  effacing  the  limits 
inseparable  from  One?  As  Truth,  pursuing  the  in- 
finite divisibility  of  matter,  dives  into  Democritus' 
bottomless  well,  so,  following  the  increasing  length 
of  the  telescope,  she  diminishes  the  probability  of 


MONISM  75 

intelligent  and  intelligible  comprehension,  and 
prompts  all  thought  to  fall  back  upon  the  actuality 
and  practicality  of  the  Midst  as  our  only  reality, 
holding  with  Parmenides,  "that  that  which  is  should 
be  infinite  is  not  permitted."  That  All  is  One  can 
be  true  only  transcendentally,  as  a  conjecture  be- 
yond all  experience,  either  material  or  mental.) 

CIRCULAR  MONISM 

The  monism  of  the  circle,  the  recoil  of  compensa- 
tion (with  the  waste  and  weariness  and  inconse- 
quence of  the  whole  process)  is  quaintly  put  by 
Emerson  in  his  poem,  "Uriel."  He  recalls  ancient 
and  pre-historic  being,  before  the  wild  time  was 
coined  into  calendar  months  and  days,  before  there 
were  orbs  or  orbits  then,  in  the  empyrean  of  pure 
thought,  seemingly  indifferent  (in  the  poem)  whether 
Nature  was  in  fact  or  as  yet  in  contemplation.  The 
young  gods  were  discussing  necessary  laws  of  form 
and  measure,  and  resolving  what  exists  and  what 
seems,  and  Uriel  "gave  his  sentiment  divine,  against 
the  being  of  a  line" : 

Line  in  nature  is  not  found; 
Unit  and  universe  are  round. 
In  vain  produced,  all  rays  return; 
Evil  will  bless,  and  ice  will  burn. 

"The  rash  word  boded  ill  to  all" ;  of  what  avail  were 
ambition  or  temporal  success,  if  an  undiscriminat- 
ing  time  could  avenge  and  retrieve  it  all?  "The 
stern  old  war  gods  shook  their  heads";  what  mat- 
tered their  victories  or  achievements?  The  red 
slayer  but  dreams  that  he  slays.  The  balance-beam 


76  PLURIVERSE 

of  fate  is  bent.     Hell  cannot  hold  its  own.     All 
glides  into  confusion  and  misuse.     But 

Straightway  a  forgetting  wind 

Stole  over  the  celestial  kind, 

And  their  lips  the  secret  kept, 

If  in  ashes  the  fire-seed  slept; 

But  now  and  then  truth-speaking  things 

Shamed  the  angels'  veiling  wings; 

Out  of  the  good  of  evil  born 

Came  Uriel's  voice  of  cherub  scorn, 

And  a  blush  tinged  the  upper  ski/. 

And  the  gods  shook,  they  knew  not  why. 

But  the  conjecture  of  an  essentially  centripetal  or 
reverting  element  in  thought,  although  we  should 
not  at  all  grudge  it  as  implicating  self-relation  by 
process,  fades  before  a  more  practical  consideration, 
pertinent  at  once  to  metaphysic  and  common  sense. 
The  law  or  fact  of  gravitation  renders  monism 
scientifically  impossible. 

It  is  a  matter  of  philosophical  importance  to  de- 
termine the  truth  or  falsity  of  this  dictum,  that 
"unit  and  universe  are  round";  that  is,  to  know 
whether  existence  is  a  continuous  democracy  or  a 
somewhat  centered  autocracy,  for  which  space  is 
wholly  subjective,  mere  room  or  freedom  from  ob- 
struction. This  is  no  idle  speculation.  Any  edu- 
cated mechanic  knows  that  his  rules  are  perversions 
of  scientific  fact.  He  knows  that  his  water-level  is 
not  the  true  tangent,  which  practically  would  bow 
up  into  the  atmosphere,  and  that  his  plumb-lines 
converge  at  the  bottom  like  the  sides  of  a  bell- 
crowned  hat.  It  is  of  prime  theological  importance 


MONISM  77 

to  know  if  intelligence  has  a  centripetal  or  back- 
looking  tendency,  as  has  the  flying  foot  of  the  com- 
pass, or  the  lost  man  in  the  woods,  whose  best  leg 
brings  him  back  to  his  starting  point.  For  as 
before  noticed,  the  fact,  if  such  it  may  be,  is  no  proof 
of  self-relation,  save  as  in  the  process  of  the  Hege- 
lian absolute  —  which  ends  nowhere  and  amounts  to 
nothing. 

We  want  a  new  or  at  least  an  additional  cri- 
tique of  pure  reason.  Kant  was  thorough  enough 
to  see  that  man's  limit  of  penetration  and  explana- 
tion is  drawn  in  the  plain  "I  think."  But  the  liberty 
of  transcendental  speculation  opens  the  field  to  very 
ambitious  and  pretentious  thinking,  and  to  the  in- 
vention of  new  words ;  and  at  the  same  time,  given 
the  canon  of  reason  as  his  own  "I  think,"  "/  feel" 
must  claim  a  large  share  in  the  matter  of  thinking. 
Hereby  we  get  those  exclamations  of  Herbart  and 
Jacobi,  and  philosophy  comes  down  to  psychology 
—  asking  the  opinion  of  the  natural  man  and  the 
unsophisticated  child,  appealing  to  the  "heart"  as 
well  as  to  the  mind,  to  sense  as  well  as  to  understand- 
ing, to  satisfy  the  obsession  of  Cause,  or  Why. 
Here  the  inarticulate  divine  gets  utterance:  Why 
not  the  same  when  a  man,  opposed  or  grieved  or  dis- 
appointed, growls  of  "God,"  or  "damnation"?  He 
gives  the  heart  of  reason,  which  has  no  profounder 
expression.  We  cannot  go  deeper  than  this  for 
cause  or  explanation. 

Needs  there  a  deeper  cause  for  the  conception  of 
a  child  than  is  experienced  in  the  venereal  heat,  born 
of  accidental  contact  and  occasion?  Shall  we  as- 
cribe to  primogeniture  and  succession  the  thousand 


78  PLURIVERSE 

seminal  germs  —  active  creatures  under  the  micro- 
scope —  of  which  but  one  or  two  are  preserved  and 
cherished?  Why  shall  I  doubt  that  my  own  need 
of  contact  or  material  company  on  a  dangerous  emi- 
nence explains,  is  the  same  as  the  gravitation  of 
matter?  It  is  not  a  highbrow  explanation,  but  it 
shall  serve  if  science  can  offer  none  more  appealing 
to  the  something  higher  or  deeper  than  science  which 
Schelling  declared  he  certainly  did  know.  If  phil- 
osophy ever  succeeds  it  may  have  the  discomfiture 
of  finding  its  spectacles  on  its  nose. 

This  consideration  makes  philosophy  easier,  or 
at  least  more  hopeful.  If  we  could  discover  some 
one  thought  or  thing  —  whether  form  or  matter  or 
harmony  or  whatsoever  —  which,  given  time,  could 
initiate  and  continue  the  results  of  nature  in  their 
variety  and  manyness,  we  would  not  so  insist  upon 
a  superstitious  primogeniture,  but  would  give  more 
credit  to  the  mechanical  impersonality  of  the  en- 
vironment. We  are  possibly  too  superstitious  as  to 
this  primogeniture.  We  rightly  assume,  in  general, 
that  the  oak  comes  from  the  acorn,  and  the  acorn 
in  turn  from  the  oak,  so  telescoping  the  whole  process 
out  of  a  divine  original,  for  which  the  environment 
seems  merely  negative  and  receptive.  But  the  fact 
shows  that  this  line  of  descent  has  no  sacred  integ- 
rity; there  are  organic  wholes  whose  norm  is  to  be 
credited  to  the  environment  alone,  outside  of  the 
line  of  sacred  heredity. 

For  example,  here  is  a  willow  tree,  a  beautiful 
whole  in  aesthetic  thought  —  root,  stem  and  branches 
appealing  to  designing  intelligence.  We  may  re- 
gard it  as  of  two  parts,  the  roots  and  the  apparent 


MONISM  79 

tree  —  a  primogenital  whole.  But  now  as  a  fact 
of  experience  we  may  cut  off  a  limb  or  a  twig  of 
the  proper  tree  and  plant  it  in  the  ground,  and 
the  environment  will  furnish  it  a  root  of  its  own, 
and  make  it  a  goodly  organic  whole ;  and  if  we  sever 
the  old  top  from  the  new  root,  the  environment  will 
furnish  a  new  top  from  the  remaining  root  —  ful- 
filling a  perfect  organism  outside  the  line  of  heredi- 
tary descent,  and  affording  a  complete  break  in  the 
primogenitive  succession,  and  so  vacating  any  orig- 
inal intention  of  heredity  in  that  instance. 

A  fact  like  this  looms  large  in  teleology,  where  we 
have  to  concur  with  M.  Bergson,  that  however  the 
positive  activity  appears  in  current  life,  the  nega- 
tive shores  react  and  determine  the  course  of  the 
stream  quite  as  much  as  they  are  worn  and  deter- 
mined by  it.  The  check  is  as  potent  in  the  result  as 
is  the  ostensible  intention,  yet  it  gets  credit  for 
only  a  brute  resistance  or  stolidity.  So  that  modern 
philosophy,  better  affecting  mechanism  which  it 
assumes  to  understand,  is  using  in  its  explanation 
as  little  as  possible  of  personality  and  metaphysics, 
preferring  rather  to  ignore  intention  altogether  than 
seek  it  in  first  principles,  where  it  would  be  a  mystery 
still  and  at  last,  and  also  lacking  the  familiarity  and 
habitude  of  mechanical  explanation  —  it  being  satis- 
fied with  science  without  speculating  on  the  science 
of  it.  And  given  the  fulcrum  of  Archimedes,  and 
the  hair  trigger  with  which  to  let  off  M.  Bergson's 
explosions  of  stored  energy,  a  clever  thinker  can 
make  a  very  plausible  demonstration  with  matter  and 
mechanism.  He  shall  need  only  that  his  leading 
cornet  finesse  the  high  C. 


80  PLURIVERSE 

Here  then  I  invoke  Kant's  canon  of  pure  reason, 
the  plain  "I  think"  of  the  cultivated  man.  This 
permits  the  entrance  of  the  common  sense,  of  the 
One  of  first  principles,  as  well  as  the  expert  of  the 
Many,  who  in  his  vast  and  labored  complications 
may  presume  to  determine  such  data  as  the  paral- 
laxes of  fixed  stars.  There  are  certainties  of  sense 
below  the  threshold  of  relations,  and  there  may  be 
intimations  of  the  first  principle  had  in  placing  one's 
hand  on  the  heart  of  Nature,  or  one's  ear  close  to 
the  ground  —  not  as  a  great  "reasoner"  but  with  a 
simple  faith  —  say  of  Herbart  or  Jacobi,  or  of 
Jesus,  when  he  declared,  "If  any  man  will  do  His 
will  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine."  For  it  was 
thus  that  Plato  conceived  the  first  principle  of  be- 
ing as  the  Good,  the  sense  of  value  —  not  by  an 
activity  or  equation  (as  Heraclitus  made  being  in- 
evitable in  the  equality  of  being  and  not  being  dia- 
lectically),  and  by  a  direct  empirical  appreciation 
of  reality. 

So  I  find  gravitation  a  disproof  of  monism;  and 
as  no  scientist  assumes  to  account  for  gravitation  as 
either  an  effect  or  a  cause,  I  offer  my  insight  of  it 
as  a  heart  experience,  partly  prompted  by  the  an- 
cient Scripture,  the  first  afterthought  of  creation, 
"It  is  not  good  to  be  alone."  Even  God  wants 
company  in  all  the  philosophies  that  I  have  read. 

Gravitation,  primarily,  is  not  mere  attraction  to 
the  earth,  but  a  general  principle,  the  affection  of 
matter  for  its  kind.  A  chip  floating  in  a  basin  of 
water  will  draw  up  the  motes  beneath  it ;  it  would 
not  float  alone.  Beasts  and  men  alike  want  com- 
pany. He  who  finds  a  prize  is  ill  content  therewith 


MONISM  81 

until  he  has  found  some  one  to  share  his  admiration. 
A  man  at  any  high  elevation  must  have  contact  with 
some  material  thing.  When  he  has  climbed  the 
great  pyramid  and  found  himself  in  the  empty 
heaven,  on  a  square  not  wider  than  a  bedroom,  he 
may  kneel  toward  the  dear  earth,  "the  ancient 
Mother,  for  some  comfort  yet."  Is  not  this  a  gravi- 
tation that  everywhere  affects  the  local  centres  and 
prompts  the  thought  of  a  one  centre  for  the  All, 
forgetting  that  such  an  All  must  be  limitless  and  not 
one?  Kant  (inadvertantly  doubtless)  alluded  to 
"the  gravitation  that  holds  the  universe  together"; 
he  did  not  think  of  the  gravitation  which  must  hold 
the  universe  apart ;  for  any  system  or  limited  set  of 
centres  held  in  gravitation  must  finally  all  come  to- 
gether. 

It  matters  not  what  orbital  independence,  or  what 
complication  of  alien  forces  may  obtain  within  a 
limited  set  of  stars ;  the  uniform  togetherness  due  to 
gravitation  as  a  persistent  whole  would  ultimately 
constrict  their  limited  plurality  to  a  central  and 
motionless  mass. 

Under  countenance  of  our  idealism  and  monism 
we  may  now  revert  more  familiarly  to  our  original 
ground  and  purpose.  It  should  be  obvious  that 
monism,  or  oneism  in  philosophy,  is  a  vision  through 
the  lens  of  the  human  ego  as  a  pattern  on  which 
its  cosmos  is  designed.  Disrupting  the  umbilical 
connection  with  his  environment,  no  longer  like  a 
plant  locally  fixed  and  drawing  sustenance  from  the 
earth,  the  man  walks  forth  a  more  or  less  independ- 
ent being,  with  a  will  and  an  intelligence  of  his  own 


82  PLURIVERSE 

—  practically  one  on  his  own  account.  And  when, 
condoning  his  parasital  dependencies,  he  becomes  a 
philosopher,  a  critic  of  complete  and  real  independ- 
ence and  original  principle,  he  forthright  conject- 
tures  the  cosmos,  the  philosophical  totality,  as  an 
ego  like  himself.  It  must  be  an  independent  Whole 
and  One,  a  totality  within  its  own  comprehension, 
and  known  of  itself,  as  he  of  himself  affects  to  be. 
And  herein  was  the  latest  triumph  of  his  philosophy, 
the  metaphysical  insight  that  a  totality  must  be  an 
ego.  For  one  is  not  one  unless  known  as  such, 
comprising  in  itself  the  limitation  by  which  one  is 
one,  essentially  combining  as  subject  with  the  non- 
ego  requisite  to  an  objective  intelligence.  It  was 
the  German  Fichte  who  first  authorized  this  posi- 
tion as  a  psychological  "fact  of  consciousness." 

Fichte  was  fully  awake  and  sensitive  to  the  logi- 
cal contradiction  of  such  a  subject-object,  while 
still  insisting  upon  it,  as  not  only  a  fact  but  the  one 
fact  without  which  philosophy  is  forever  impossible; 
and  to  all  objectors  he  had  but  one  answer:  "Ask 
not  for  the  how;  be  satisfied  with  the  fact."  Our 
Professor  Ladd,  of  Yale  University,  in  his  "Intro- 
duction to  Philosophy"  still  insists,  with  the  same 
trepidation  and  embarrassment,  upon  self-relation 
as  the  "prime  fact  of  consciousness." 

With  the  human  ego  thus  regarded  as  the  neces- 
sary model  of  the  cosmos  or  theoretical  world,  we 
may  understand  how  readily  the  later  philosophers 
fell  into  the  lines  of  the  ancient  cosmologies  and 
their  consequent  theologies,  in  which  unity  and  com- 
prehension were  the  supreme  and  prevailing  princi- 


MONISM  83 

pies,  while  man  and  his  destiny  were  the  objects  con- 
templated in  their  operation. 

But  what  seems  to  us  the  greatest  mistake  in 
modern  history,  and  that  which  is  the  main  provoca- 
tive of  the  present  treatise,  is  the  myopic  and  im- 
pudent assumption,  not  only  that  man  is  unique  in 
nature,  and  that  such  a  comparatively  insignificant 
and  incidental  parasite  can  in  any  comprehensive 
sense  represent  the  necessary  qualities  of  the  world, 
as  his  own  best  thought  must  conceive  it,  but  that 
because  a  totality  confessedly  must  be  an  ego  there 
must  be  any  totality  at  all;  or  again,  that  the  stars, 
however  many,  must  have  a  whole  number,  as  so 
many  and  no  more  —  this,  although  space  will  not 
be  held  to  have  limits,  as  possibly  walled  in  or 
broken  off,  but  must  still  extend,  and  presumptively 
carry  an  increment  of  stars. 

This  confusion  as  to  number  ignores  the  ideality 
of  number  itself  —  a  very  frequent  mistake,  such  as 
is  also  the  phrase  "an  infinite  number,"  which  cancels 
the  explicit  discretion  for  which  number  is  intended. 
The  slight  "puzzle"  which  was  mentioned  in  our 
Chapter  I,  wherein  a  new  star,  as  one  more  than 
what  are,  must  increase  their  number,  and  so  prove 
that  they  have  a  whole  number,  so  many  and  no 
more,  will  become  "one  more"  by  the  addition  of  a 
new  one,  will  depend  upon  the  question  whether  they 
have  already  a  number  to  be  added  to.  Your 
"more"  is  a  relative  and  comparative,  and  must  have 
its  much  to  begin  with,  and  a  definite  limit  which  it 
may  exceed;  and  such  a  factual  limit  is  the  very 
requirement  at  issue.  If  the  stars  go  on  and  on, 
as  an  increment  and  occupancy  of  space,  all  thought 


84  PLURIVERSE 

of  wholeness  is  excluded,  and  your  "number"  ex- 
hales as  a  merely  subjective  discrimination,  or  fanci- 
ful conjecture  of  addition  by  one,  regardless  of  any 
sum  resulting. 

It  is  here  that  one  needs  most  urgently  the  doc- 
trine of  idealism,  that  "consciousness  posits  this 
world,"  and  that  difference  or  distinction  is  mental, 
and  not  a  property  of  "things  in  themselves."  Our 
habits  of  thought  have  in  many  instances  turned 
things  inside  out,  so  far  as  explanation  is  concerned. 
For  instance,  the  ordinary  notion  of  a  volcano  is 
of  a  huge  tube  that  spouts  lava  and  ashes ;  whereas 
in  scientific  fact  the  volcano  proper  is  a  cancerous 
hole  in  the  earth,  from  which  in  time  has  been  built 
up  the  mountain  itself.  So  the  civilized  man  is 
dreadfully  weak  and  shameful  without  his  clothes ; 
your  policeman  feels  most  formidable  in  the  buckram 
of  his  official  overcoat,  while  your  real  fighter  feels 
efficient  only  when  he  is  naked. 

Our  most  eminent  thinkers  seem  to  be  still  ob- 
sessed by  the  half-savage  cosmologies  which  make 
man  and  his  ego  the  centre  of  explanation.  We  can- 
not easily  evade  or  positively  deny  the  large  field 
of  thought  in  which  all  size  is  relative  to  organic 
lenses;  there  are  worlds  within  what  some  kind  of 
sanity  must  still  believe  in  as  the  real  world.  A 
modern  man  must  indeed  be  tainted  with  one  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  "insanities  of  idealism,"  to  doubt  that  even 
if  the  earth  were  stripped  of  all  living  things  and 
left  barren  and  blasted  as  our  moon  appears  — 
man  and  his  philosophies  and  his  histories  and  reli- 
gions vanished  into  less  than  thin  air  —  the  glorious 
stars,  among  which  by  analogical  reckoning  his 


MONISM  85 

earth  is  but  a  speck,  would  still  revolve  as,  theo- 
retically at  least,  they  have  ever  revolved,  regardless 
of  all  impertinent  sensitiveness  to  time  or  times. 

It  would  seem  that  any  rational  contemplation  of 
this  scientific  extensity  and  authentic  endurance 
should  obliterate  the  small  prejudice  of  oneness  and 
limitation,  so  obviously  due  to  the  subjective  egotism 
in  which  it  matriculates. 

Yet  it  is  not  on  the  metaphysical  necessities  of 
the  case  that  this  essay  mainly  proceeds  —  at  least 
not  so  much  as  upon  the  scientific  and  empirical  in- 
duction that,  whatever  forces  may  be  held  to  account 
for  the  local  revolutions  of  the  individual  stars,  the 
general  impulse  of  togetherness  (under  which  even 
their  minor  evolutions  are  performed)  demands  and 
assures  an  ever-external  field  of  balance  and  compen- 
sation which  excludes  the  possibility  of  wholeness  and 
its  limitation,  lest  the  pluriversal  Many,  factually 
apparent,  should  become  a  conglomerate  ball. 

In  brief  then,  monism  is  the  general  egotism  which 
in  idealism  ends  as  pure  solipsism.  The  worlds  of 
idealism  are  home  made ;  they  are  the  microcosms  of 
which  monism  is  a  macrocosm  constricted  to  unity 
by  its  own  egotistic  limitation,  founded,  philosophi- 
cally, upon  faith  in  "self-consciousness."  In  monism, 
ego  and  non-ego  culminate  as  God  and  the  world. 

Vulgar  monism  founds  largely  on  the  uncultured 
sentiment  that  there  must  be  recognized  an  all  and 
whole  of  the  world  that  is  other  than  the  intelligent 
witness  of  it.  Philosophical  monism,  assured  of  the 
metaphysical  percept  that  comprehension  and  to- 
tality must  include  the  being  that  comprehends, 
founds  upon  the  hypothesis  of  self-relation  as  science 


86  PLURIVERSE 

of  science,  and  confirms  its  position  psychologically 
by  the  assumption  of  "self-consciousness"  as  em- 
pirical and  unquestionable  fact  —  however  meri- 
torious or  unaccountable  such  fact  may  be. 

Our  position  ignores  (or  at  best  condones)  the 
subjective  ideality  of  space,  standing  by  the  empiri- 
cal commonsense  in  its  inference  of  an  element  in 
existence  that  is  opaque  and  objectively  negative  to 
knowledge,  and  is  operated  under  laws  as  mysterious 
and  as  respectable  as  the  laws  prevailing  over  intel- 
ligence itself,  as  we  exemplify  it:  that  we  have  no 
science  of  science  other  than  as  the  gift  of  an  alien 
energy  of  which  we  have  no  comprehension  or  an}' 
such  limitation  as  is  requisite  to  the  objective  unity 
either  of  it  or  of  ourselves.  Restrained  therefore 
from  any  other  than  the  philosophy  of  fact,  and  con- 
fined to  law  as  we  empirically  find  it,  we  accept  space 
as  unlimited  extensity;  analogically  carrying  in  it 
the  sidereal  increment  which  our  science  has  revealed, 
and  confirming  our  judgment  of  sideral  continuity 
and  innumerability :  from  the  general  law  of  to- 
getherness, which,  relaxing  its  force  only  according 
to  the  distance  of  its  material,  would  ultimately 
tolerate  no  vacant  space  or  room  for  orbital  motion 
(by  whatever  cause)  under  any  other  condition  than 
an  extensity  transcending  all  conception  of  central- 
ity  or  unity,  or  such  wholeness  or  comprehension  as 
the  word  "universe"  is  obviously  meant  to  infer. 

To  popularly  establish  this  position  —  not  as  ul- 
timate explanation  —  we  now  proceed  to  the  con- 
sideration of  cause  or  reason  itself,  and  thence  to  a 
citation  of  the  superior  and  most  plausible  judg- 
ments which  have  disqualified  that  notion  of  self- 


MONISM  87 

relation,  or  subject-object,  which  has  been  the  stam- 
inal  element  of  modern  philosophy. 

We  are  not  to  say  that  idealism  and  self-relation 
are  not  good  philosophy  —  perhaps  the  best  —  but 
that  philosophy  at  its  best  is  not  a  satisfactory  ex- 
planation. 


CHAPTER  IV 
CAUSE 

CAUSE,  the  insatiable  Why  of  human  curiosity 
and  interest,  is  naturally  the  storm  centre  of 
philosophy.  What  is  meant  by  cause  de- 
pends almost  wholly  upon  the  culture  of  the  one 
who  means  it.  The  curiosity  deepens  as  the  culture 
advances.  The  average  thinker  or  student  is  con- 
tent with  referring  any  novel  fact  to  an  acknowl- 
edged class.  One  who  should  hold  every  thing  or 
event  to  the  arbitrament  that  he  could  produce  it 
himself  would  be  regarded  as  a  thorough  radical; 
yet  such  a  thoroughbred  would  halt  just  where  the 
ripe  philosopher  begins,  for  his  most  anxious  ques- 
tion is,  "Does  Personality  explain"?  "Know  thy- 
self" is  philosophy's  most  classic  vocation ;  and  pos- 
sibly her  keenest  quest  is  as  to  whether  one  really 
knows  himself  when  he  thinks  that  he  does.  The 
definition  of  cause,  or  indeed  of  anything  else,  may 
depend  upon  the  possibility  of  self-knowledge  in  a 
science  of  science. 

All  finite  or  parasitic  reasoning  is  thrust  out  of 
rational  propriety  by  the  constant  obsession  of  the 
reasoner's  own  beginning,  so  that  its  most  strenuous 
theoretical  curiosity  or  demand  for  explanation  ar- 
raigns the  cosmos  itself  for  a  foundation  or  a  fer- 
tility beneath  it,  not  reflecting  that  the  notion  of 

88 


CAUSE  89 

beginning  is  a  shadow  cast  by  his  own  fate  upon  a 
ground  that  is  not  necessarily  subject  to  such  a  de- 
mand, a  ground  that  cannot  be  referred  to  previous 
ground  in  a  quest  for  explanation.  Cosmic  begin- 
ning is  unthinkable,  owing  to  the  lack  of  marginal 
space  and  time  in  which  to  distinguish  its  advent: 
there  is  no  canvas  for  such  a  picture,  which  can 
obtain  only  as  a  nominal  conjecture. 

Shadworth  H.  Hodgson,  then  president  of  the 
Aristotelian  Society,  of  London,  in  an  address,  Nov. 
7,  1887,  on  the  reorganization  of  philosophy,  spoke 
as  follows: 

"A  cause  is  conceived  as  an  absolute  existent  mak- 
ing something  else  to  be  or  to  become.  When  the 
inevitable  question,  'How?'  is  put  to  one  of  these 
absolute  existents  or  causes,  a  progressus  in  indefi- 
nitum  is  entered  on,  to  cause  beyond  cause,  which 
continues  until  it  is  arbitrarily  arrested  by  assum- 
ing a  First  Cause,  which  being  uncaused  by  any- 
thing else,  is  conceived  as  'causi  sui'  or  self-exist- 
ent .  .  .  which  combines  the  contrary  character- 
istics of  cause  and  effect  in  the  same  existent  at  the 
same  time.  .  .  .  The  term  First  Cause  is  therefore 
a  contradiction  which  conceals  ignorance,  while  at 
the  same  time  it  poses  as  an  explanation.  But  such 
explanations  are  rapidly  coming  to  be  looked  upon 
as  not  explanatory.  The  conception  of  cause  seems 
to  have  been  as  unfruitful  in  science  as  it  has  been 
unthinkable  in  philosophy." 

If  one  could  identify  cause  in  an  alien  world,  it 
would  appear  as  the  satisfaction  of  interest  and 
curiosity  as  concerning  the  contents  of  experience; 
but  after  a  cause  has  served  for  perfunctory  ex- 


90  PLURIVERSE 

planation  for  a  thousand  kinds  of  curiosity  and  in- 
terest, is  becomes  practically  objective,  and  the 
subjective  element  in  the  situation  is  sublated  and 
obscured ;  the  lesson  of  idealism  is  ignored ;  the  fact 
is  forgotten  that  in  some  way,  or  in  some  sense,  the 
reason  of  things  is  reason.  In  the  whole  fact  or 
occurrence,  as  seen  in  the  alien  world,  the  reason  or 
the  reasonableness  of  cause  should  be  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  fact  to  the  curiosity  and  interest 
of  the  subjective  element  of  the  experience:  be  the 
fact  as  it  may,  the  cause  as  explanation  is  what 
contents  the  intelligence  concerned.  Objective  or 
factual  cause  therefore  were  absurd:  only  in  the 
contentment  of  intelligence  can  it  pose  as  cause  or 
reason  or  explanation.  Even  if  we  knew  the  ground 
of  the  fact  sought  to  be  explained,  the  subject 
inquiring  may  not  be  included  in  the  explanation. 

Born  and  bred  as  we  are  to  struggle  for  existence 
in  the  world  of  wonders,  compelled  to  be  satisfied  at 
best  with  merely  partial  successes,  habited  to  ignore 
a  myriad  of  miracles,  and  admonished  by  urgent  ne- 
cessities to  suppress  any  ambition  transcending  the 
claims  of  our  finite  nature  —  cuffed  by  the  great 
Mother,  as  Emerson  said,  and  admonished  to  "eat 
your  victuals,  children,  and  say  no  more  of  it,"  we 
realize  betimes  that  even  our  curiosity  is  at  fault, 
as  to  the  limits  and  the  meaning  of  our  own  dis- 
content. "Pleased  with  a  feather,  tickled  with  a 
straw,"  men  even  glory  in  momentary  achievements 
which  should  but  emphasize  their  impotence  and 
ignorance.  It  is  only  the  highest  culture  that  at- 
tains any  appreciation  of  the  mystery  of  being. 

As   for  causes,  we  have,  according  to   our  con- 


CAUSE  91 

scientious  thoroughness,  various  grades  of  explana- 
tion ;  for  instance,  here  is  an  explosion  of  gunpowder ; 
the  mere  scientist  is  content  to  observe,  and  proud 
to  declare,  that  it  is  due  to  the  release  of  certain 
gases  latent  in  a  composition  of  sulphur,  nitre  and 
carbon;  the  savant  goes  deeper  and  brings  up  his 
"elements,"  his  electrons  and  what  not;  then  comes 
the  biologist  with  germs  and  cells  and  protoplasm; 
then  the  psychologist  with  his  nerves,  reactions, 
intuitions  and  instincts;  then  the  metaphysician, 
questioning  after  reality  and  appearance ;  the  ideal- 
ist, determining  all  reality  through  subjective  laws 
of  the  mind.  And  what  next?  If  either  of  these 
experts  shall  plume  himself  with  claims  of  radical 
explanation,  he  will  but  classify  himself  in  an  infe- 
rior culture;  another  expert  shall  warn  him  that 
his  intelligence  is  but  secondary  and  does  not  ex- 
plain —  that  though  he  had  himself  made  all  things 
that  are,  as  freely  as  he  might  write  these  words,  his 
philosophy  has  yet  to  begin. 

How  philosophy  grew,  from  the  obsession  of  ob- 
jective cause  and  natural  necessity  up  to  the  conceit 
of  self-relation;  how  it  advanced  from  the  savage 
superstition  of  controlling  spirits  in  the  air  to  ele- 
mental powers,  as  atoms  and  abstractions  (such  as 
heat  and  cold,  love  and  hate)  to  the  "nous"  of 
Anaxagoras,  and  thence  to  the  subjective  skepticism 
of  the  sophists,  in  which  every  man  was  for  himself 
the  measure  of  all  things,  and  the  oracle  of  truth 
and  justice;  how  Socrates  as  the  chief  of  sophists 
made  mind  in  general  rather  than  man  the  individ- 
ual the  spokesman  of  reason,  and  made  ideas  the 
reality  amid  the  illusions  of  sense;  how  the  notion 


92  PLURIVERSE 

of  principle,  as  prime  fertility  and  power,  mounted 
to  the  ego,  first  as  the  active  demonstrator  in  a 
world  of  otherness,  and  then  as  surrepted  (both  the 
hammer  and  the  anvil)  into  itself  as  self-related 
subject-object;  how  this  psychological  illusion  of 
self-knowledge  struggled  for  recognition  for  nearly 
a  century  (and  has  its  defenders  even  now)  ;  how  the 
disheartened  professors  shouted  "Back  to  Kant !" 
how  radical  empiricism  found  matter-stuff  as  plaus- 
ible as  mind-stuff,  so  long  as  knowledge  could  not 
be  essentially  grounded  in  a  science  of  science;  how 
the  post-Kantians  (Schopenhauer,  Hartman,  Diih- 
ring,  Lange,  Bergson,  et  aZ.)  exploited  and  glorified 
a  de-personalized  intelligence,  and  how  Herr  Eucken 
finally  earned  the  Nobel  prize  by  discounting  the 
whole  philosophical  industry,  and  socially  protest- 
ing, as  to  these  latter-day  protagonists,  that  "they 
do  not  exist !"  —  how  all  this  came  to  pass  makes  a 
"very  pretty  quarrel  as  it  stands."  The  only  literary 
comment  that  we  presently  find  appropriate  is,  that 
while  the  full  and  ripe  expounder  of  "The  Problem 
of  Human  Life,"  after  graciously  crediting  all  the 
original  experts,  merely  deplores  the  "questions  yet 
unanswered"  and  the  "problems  yet  unsolved,"  and 
still  fails  to  see,  or  at  best  neglects  to  explain  that  the 
one  crux  of  all  —  the  one  solution  through  which 
philosophy  could  succeed  and  justify  its  long  career 
—  is  Self-Relation,  failing  of  which  there  remains  for 
humanity  but  the  Mystery,  and  possibly  the  ulti- 
mate surd. 

The  path  from  the  naive  cognition  of  common 
sense  and  "free  will"  up  to  the  position  from  which 
Schwegler  announced  "a  certain  existent  unreason" 


CAUSE  93 

—  or  to  that  where  Hodgson  declares  that  "causal- 
ity per  se,  has  no  philosophical  or  scientific  justi- 
fication,"   and    that    "search    for    cause    has    been 
replaced    by    search    for    phenomenal    antecedents 
merely,  under  the  recognition  that  realities  answer- 
ing to  the  terms  'cause'  and  'causality*  are  impos- 
sible  and  non-existent,"  —  is   certainly  a  path  of 
technical  and  scientific  culture;  yet  the  reader  can- 
not know  too  soon,  nor  believe  too  cordially,  that 
the  mysterious  glory  and  esoteric  seclusion  which 
have  maintained  the  name  philosophy  as  a  headline 
of  the  literary  program,  and  as  well  the  pretensions 
that  have  emphasized  the  natural  bewilderment  of 
"the   plain   man,"    are   utterly   inconsequent.     The 
Mystery  remains,  as  somewhat  not  so  badly  hinted 
by  the  Philosophical  Dude:  "Something,  you  know, 
that  puts  you  in  mind  of  something  you  can't  think 
of." 

Said  Eucken :  "After  all  the  weary  work  of  many 
thousand  years,  we  are  to-day  in  a  condition  of  pain- 
ful uncertainty,  a  state  of  hopeless  fluctuation,  not 
merely  with  regard  to  individual  questions,  but  also 
as  to  the  general  purpose  and  meaning  of  life.  .  .  . 
The  facts  themselves  are  questioned ;  doubt  arises  as 
to  whether  they  can  readily  be  affirmed  as  facts  at 
all.  .  .  .  The  supremacy  of  man  is  now  more  and 
more  disputed,  and  especially  the  assertion  that  his 
place  among  the  creatures  is  unique.  .  .  .  The 
content  of  man's  life  is  not  the  easy,  unsought  pro- 
duct of  a  natural  process  of  historical  development 

—  not  a  necessarily  proper  process  to  or  toward 
something  really  worth  while." 

Again  he  has  said:  "Scarcely  anything  repels  so 


94  PLURIVERSE 

much  as  the  impertinence  of  representing  the  world 
as  it  is  as  a  realm  of  reason."  "God  (in  Christian- 
ity) has  taken  the  burden  of  it  upon  Himself,  and 
thereby  sanctified  it  .  .  ."  but  "Evil  remains  a 
permanently  insoluble  mystery."  .  .  .  "An  imme- 
diate consequence  is  the  difficulty,  indeed,  the  im- 
possibility of  an  appropriate  representation  in 
thought  and  conception;  every  exposition  remains 
a  mere  approximation,  retains  a  symbolic  charac- 
ter." 

Kant  says:  "Our  reason  has  this  peculiar  fate, 
that  with  reference  to  one  class  of  our  knowledge  it 
is  always  troubled  with  questions  which  cannot  be 
ignored  (because  they  spring  from  the  very  nature 
of  reason)  and  which  cannot  be  answered  because 
they  transcend  the  powers  of  human  reason." 

As  in  idealism  we  were  offered  the  alternative  of 
regarding  objects  as  either  given  to  the  mind  from 
without  or  posited  by  consciousness  from  its  own 
spontaneity,  so,  analogously,  as  to  the  question  of 
cause,  we  may  have  acquired  a  habit  of  expecting  to 
find  only  before  our  mental  eye  the  ground  of  ex- 
planation, which  can  perhaps  be  found  at  least  as 
plausibly  behind  it;  in  other  words  (as  the  philoso- 
phers say),  cause  may  be  only  subjectively  possible, 
and  absurd  when  assumed  as  an  object.  And 
straightway  we  perceive,  upon  reflection,  that  any 
objective  thing,  taken  as  the  cause  of  anything  else, 
or  of  itself,  would  more  obstreperously  call  for  cause 
than  docs  the  thing  to  be  explained;  its  presence 
would  but  double  and  complicate  the  problem;  so 
that  the  reason  of  things  must  in  some  sense  be 


CAUSE  95 

reason  itself  as  knowing  itself.  In  other  words 
(again),  since  intelligence  proper  can  only  contem- 
plate and  reflect,  and  cannot  create  or  produce, 
cause  proper  (for  us)  shall  mediate  or  interpret,  not 
between  the  void  and  the  fact  which  it  could  not  pro- 
duce, but  between  the  fact  as  given  and  our  intelli- 
gence as  really  such.  It  is  not  being  then  that  de- 
mands or  can  furnish  or  represent  cause,  for  cause 
objectively  taken  must  have  being  on  its  own  ac- 
count. Fact  is  the  deepest  reality. 

For  assume  that  a  thing  has  had  a  cause;  must 
the  cause  remain  to  sustain  and  keep  it  caused? 
Surely  not ;  the  cause  shall  have  passed  on  and  left 
the  thing,  possibly  with  a  momentum  which  now  by 
its  presence  demonstrates  the  sufficiency  of  being  for 
itself;  and  since  the  thing  may  have  been  eternally, 
as  well  as  may  any  objective  or  knowable  cause,  be- 
ing as  such  does  not  call  for  cause,  and  must  be 
originally  presumed  in  any  consideration  of  the 
problem  of  existence.  Philosophy,  or  explanation, 
must  begin  with  the  recognition  of  some  existence, 
and  can  succeed  only  as  the  science  of  that  science 
itself. 

Fact,  otherwise  being  (not  cause),  is  the  "first 
principle"  of  dialectic,  the  original  presumption 
from  which  explanation  must  begin:  a  pre-assump- 
tion  in  time,  which  cannot  have  begun,  since  begin- 
ning were  possible  only  in  a  time  presumed.  Cause 
then  can  be  only  a  witness  or  interpretation  of  fact 
to  present  intelligence,  and  as  a  "reason"  can  have 
only  a  historical  ground,  sufficiently  announcing  that 
"it  is"  —  because  it  is;  its  authority  in  explanation 
founds  no  deeper  than  the  authenticity  of  the  fact. 


96  PLURIVERSE 

It  has  always  been  too  late  for  philosophy  to  fac- 
tualize  beginning  or  "first  cause." 

It  has  been  held  naive  or  puerile,  saying  of  any- 
thing "it  is  because  it  is,"  or  "it  goes  because  it 
is  going."  But  consider  a  revolving  wheel,  still 
whirling  by  reason  of  its  "momentum" ;  the  belt  may 
be  off,  and  all  the  men  gone  home:  there  is  no  ma- 
terial difference  in  the  wheel  whether  moving  or 
motionless,  yet  it  goes  by  a  potentiality  of  mere  fact 
that  now  has  no  relation  to  any  present  cause  or 
explanation.  In  this  case  the  fact  is  final,  but  it 
became  so :  it  once  had  causes ;  but  since  it  persists 
without  them,  the  only  ground  of  its  present  being 
is  its  fact,  whose  miracle  exhales  in  the  presumption 
of  time. 

This  is  the  first  principle  of  dialectic  philosophy, 
true  if  being  and  time  are  necessary  presumptions. 
Whether  anything  at  all  is  necessary  is  a  later  ques- 
tion, for  a  newcomer  in  time. 

Whether  self-relation,  in  the  being  or  the  thought 
of  it,  is  possible  to  a  finite  and  secondary  intelli- 
gence—  to  a  parasite  as  commensurate  with  the 
cosmos  —  is  partly  a  question  of  analogy  and  per- 
spective, which,  to  say  the  least,  imposes  upon  us 
a  certain  modesty  and  humility. 

It  is  of  prime  importance  to  philosophical  sanity, 
presumed  as  capable  of  due  appreciation  and  per- 
spective, that  it  should  have  such  a  right  estimate 
of  the  worth  and  dignity  of  man  as  may  forecast 
the  probability  of  his  being  competent  to  the  secret 
of  the  world.  Advised  upon  one  hand  that  man  was 
made  in  God's  image,  and  on  another  that  nothing 
so  becomes  him  as  modest  stillness  and  humility  — 


CAUSE  97 

admonished  by  the  divinest  of  his  race  that  of  himself 
he  can  do  nothing,  yet  prompted  by  the  genius  of 
his  art  and  poetry, 

Whose  pulses,  mounting  through  the  pose  of  Ajax, 
Confront  the  lurid  blood  of  the  high  gods 
As  one  therewith  at  last, 

the  philosopher,  who  must  hold  by  analogy,  is  ad- 
monished to  regulate  his  pretensions  and  expecta- 
tions by  some  contrast  of  his  finite  unity  with  any 
presumptive  unity  of  the  whole,  or  at  least  with  the 
greatness  of  so  much  of  it  as  he  may  apprehend  in 
his  brief  career. 

Measured  under  these  lights,  how  pitiful  indeed  is 
the  ephemeral  parasite  — 

Without  asking \  hither  hurried  Whence? 
And,  without  asking  Whither  hurried  hence. 

If  philosophy  will,  like  the  green-eyed  jealousy, 
still  make  a  meat  to  feed  upon,  it  should,  in  decency 
if  not  in  reverence,  consider  its  trivial  measures  as 
contrasted  with  merely  the  measurable  —  postponing 
for  the  moment  the  unlikelihood  that  the  hymnic 
Mystery  of  the  cosmos  should  be  vocal  to  it  puny 
and  infantile  ears.  Even  if  he  could  learn  the  tune  of 
it  he  cannot  stay  to  enjoy  it. 

The  authentic  duration  of  time,  with  its  inconse- 
quent and  seemingly  purposeless  destruction  of  or- 
ganic and  ambitious  successes,  and  the  violent  dis- 
ruptions of  the  strata  which  show  that  our  planet 
was  once  symmetrical  with  water  levels,  discourage 
any  conclusions  or  fanciful  conjectures  of  progress 
toward  a  scientific  resolution  of  the  mystery  or  fate 


98  PLURIVERSE 

of  being  as  a  purpose  of  eternity.  The  whole  con- 
ception of  a  development  to  some  unthinkable  result 
is  alien  to  the  ineluctable  concession  of  eternity. 
We  have  authentic  history  which  revered  an  antiq- 
uity long  before  it,  which  yet  witnessed  Assyria 
trampling  down  the  nations  and  gathering  their 
treasure  "as  one  gathereth  eggs  that  were  forsaken," 
and  saw  her  in  turn  fall,  exalting  over  the  overthrow 
of  Nineveh.  It  saw  the  second  rise  of  Babylon  under 
Nebuchadnezzar,  and  lived  in  the  midst  of  its  splen- 
dors, and  beheld  them  all  pass  away.  "Then  came 
down  midnight."  So  utterly  had  the  local  habita- 
tion and  the  name  of  these  great  cities  vanished  from 
the  memory  of  man  that  400  years  before  the  birth 
of  Christ,  when  Xenophon  and  the  Ten  Thousand 
marched  through  the  land  after  the  battle  of  Cun- 
axa,  they  passed  the  site  of  Nineveh  and  never  knew 
of  it,  and  camped  before  the  ruins  of  Kalah,  another 
of  the  cities  of  Assyria,  and  recalled  them  as  of  an 
"ancient  city  called  Larissa." 

But  we  foreshorten  and  localize  history,  to  make 
ourselves  the  special  pets  of  Providence  —  children 
of  God  —  the  seed  of  Abraham  or  David,  people  of 
but  six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago,  while  as  literal 
and  secular  fact  we  have  in  our  institutions  the 
unquestionable  records  of  civilization  in  France  a 
hundred  thousand  years  ago.  The  excavations  of 
Nineveh  and  Babylon  have  brought  to  light  records 
which  show  Moses  and  Abraham  as  characters  in  the 
modern  fringe  of  an  antiquity  that  worked  in  bronze 
and  silver  and  gold,  and  wrote  laws  and  history  and 
"literature"  with  diamond-pointed  tools. 

And  before  these  run  the  sure  records  of  geology, 


CAUSE  99 

which  like  the  stellar  distances  have  to  change  the 
units  of  measurement,  using  millenniums  as  moments, 
to  bring  their  expression  within  the  compass  of 
human  calculation. 

Said  Kant:  "From  something  that  happens  as 
an  effect  to  infer  a  cause,  is  a  principle  of  nature, 
though  not  of  speculative  knowledge.  There  does 
not  remain  the  smallest  justification  of  a  synthetic 
proposition,  showing  how,  from  something  which  is, 
there  can  be  a  transition  to  something  totally  differ- 
ent which  we  call  cause.  .  .  .  The  principle  of 
causality,  which  is  valid  within  the  field  of  experience 
(natural  law),  is  utterly  useless,  nay,  even  mean- 
ingless, outside  it." 

Hegel,  in  his  logic  of  "essence,"  drops  the  re- 
mark, "There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  true  causality." 
.  .  .  "In  the  case  of  cause  and  effect,  the  same 
matter  is  twice  put"  .  .  .  "reciprocity  is  a  higher 
relation  than  causality." 

It  is  impossible  in  logic  that  one  thing  should 
really  produce  another;  at  best  it  could  be  only  on 
reciprocal  or  convertible  terms :  that  is  to  say,  logi- 
cally each  is  cause  or  necessity  of  the  other,  as 
neither  can  be  complete  without  the  other.  Cause 
proved  as  such,  and  emptied  of  its  effect,  would 
have  ceased  to  objectively  be. 

It  seems  the  best  way  to  set  this  matter  of  causa- 
tion right  in  popular  apprehension  to  exploit  the 
positions  and  relations  of  Kant  and  Hume  in  re- 
gard to  it. 

David  Hume  was  a  philosopher  whose  vocation 
was  not  so  much  to  radical  explanation  as  to  the 


100  PLURIVERSE 

vacation  of  a  popular  and  even  a  scientific  preposes- 
sion  in  regard  to  it  —  ».  e.,  to  the  relation  of  reason 
to  causality  as  a  necessity  in  the  nature  of  things. 
Kant  was  a  philosopher  only  incidentally  and  by  a 
necessary  implication:  he  did  not  pose  as  an  expert 
in  fundamental  explanation,  nor  in  the  enlargement 
of  knowledge,  but  rather  as  a  critic  of  the  form  and 
method  of  knowledge,  regardless  alike  of  the  con- 
tents of  the  objects  of  knowledge  and  of  the  source 
of  our  power  to  know  them.  His  metaphysics  ad- 
visedly cut  off  philosophy  and  psychology  at  both 
ends  of  it.  The  power  to  think  was  by  him  attrib- 
uted outright  to  "spontaneity"  in  the  understand- 
ing —  cutting  off  all  debate  so  far  as  radical 
explanation  was  concerned  —  while  on  the  other 
hand  he  ignored  whatever  matter  might  be  found  as 
a  property  of  things  in  themselves.  Between  these 
two  ignavias  he  proposed  to  criticise  the  form  and 
method  of  thought,  untroubled  by  either  its  origin 
or  its  results. 

In  his  "Transcendental  Analytic"  he  said:  "I  do 
not  intend  to  burden  my  critical  task,  which  con- 
cerns only  the  forms  of  synthetical  knowledge 
a  priori,  with  analytical  processes  which  aim  at  the 
explanation  of  our  concepts.  I  leave  a  fuller  treat- 
ment of  these  to  a  future  system  of  pure  reason." 

"Pure  logic  takes  no  account  of  the  contents  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  understanding,  nor  of  the  dif- 
ference of  its  objects.  It  treats  of  nothing  but  the 
pure  forms  of  thought. 

"Pure  logic  has  nothing  to  do  with  empirical 
principles,  and  borrows  nothing  from  psychology 
(as  some  have  supposed).  Psychology  has  no  influ- 


CAUSE  101 

ence  whatever  on  the  canon  of  the  understanding; 
everything  in  it  must  be  completely  a  priori." 

"The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,"  in  its  scientific 
and  only  valuable  content,  was  an  inconsequent 
diversion,  in  academic  rivalry  with  its  predecessors, 
charging  them  with  a  haphazard  procedure,  instead 
of  following  the  "sure  method  of  a  science."  This 
procedure  he  held  at  fault  mainly  in  its  assuming  as 
realities  mere  conceptions,  mere  linguistic  expres- 
sions (here  following  Bacon),  which  had  no  percep- 
tive experience  to  corroborate  them.  In  this 
unwarranted  habit  there  had  been  pretentious  demon- 
strations of  God,  and  of  freedom  and  immortality, 
which  properly  admitted  of  no  such  proof  in  any 
sure  method  of  science  that  demands  a  foundation  in 
an  experience  whose  matter  should  staminate  the 
logical  form  of  thought. 

This  sure  method  of  science  Kant  borrowed  from 
Aristotle,  who  held  Nature  as  the  graduation  of  mat- 
ter up  to  form,  of  being  up  to  thought.  These  two 
items  of  matter  and  form  Kant  substituted  with 
sense  and  understanding.  Taking  human  cognition 
as  his  logical  problem,  he  divided  our  mental  equip- 
ment as  of  two  stems  from  an  unknown  root,  one 
stem,  sense,  having  a  receptive  capacity  to  which 
objects  are  given,  the  other,  understanding,  being 
active,  spontaneous,  whereby  objects  are  thought. 
These  two  faculties  were  in  practice  united,  per- 
vading each  other,  and  considerable  separately  only 
for  analytical  results.  Neither  could  be  preferred 
to  the  other  as  an  authority  on  truth  or  reality; 
they  render  a  joint  verdict,  and  every  whole  utter- 
ance of  thought  must  have  both  their  voices.  Per- 


102  PLURIVERSE 

cepts  of  sense  are  blind  without  concepts  of  thought, 
and  without  the  matter  of  sensibility  concepts  are 
wholly  empty.  The  interpervasion  of  the  two  facul- 
ties is  so  thorough  and  essential  that  in  their  utmost 
distinction  each  shows  a  trace  of  the  other:  there  is 
no  sense  so  dull  but  it  has  a  scintil  of  intelligence,  and 
there  is  no  conception  so  fine  but  it  is  haunted  by 
the  shadow  of  "a  certain  existent  unreason." 

This  unity  of  sense  and  understanding  Kant  seems 
to  have  mentally  likened  to  a  stream  as  of  water  that 
was  ostensibly  pure,  yet  carrying  a  sediment  at  its 
veriest  surface,  while  the  grossest  matter  at  the 
bottom  was  not  hopelessly  opaque.  Or  he  might 
have  regarded  the  joint  faculties  as  of  a  pencil, 
sharp  at  one  end  for  punctual  and  explicit  delinea- 
tion, the  other  end  being  dull  or  blunt,  for  surfaces 
and  gradations. 

But  we  may  see  at  once  that  he  did  not  contem- 
plate radical  explanation  in  the  union  of  these  so 
different  faculties,  one  wholly  passive  and  receptive, 
the  other  spontaneous  and  autonomous ;  for  while 
we  may  easily  understand,  how  to  the  senses  objects 
are  "given"  from  without,  we  have  still  to  wonder  at 
the  origin  of  thought,  why  that  also  is  not  "given." 
In  spite  of  his  disqualification  of  all  "empirical  prin- 
ciples," he  jumbles  cause,  psychology  and  God  in 
one  monstrous  fetich  of  "spontaneity." 

Lost  amid  the  barren  logomachies  of  the  past, 
the  weary  spirit  of  philosophy  has  latterly  paused 
in  a  certain  resentful  self-respect,  as  if  she  had  gone 
too  far  afield,  or  looked  too  high,  for  a  sufficient  ex- 
planation. A  man  sometimes  has  moments  when,  if 


CAUSE  103 

he  were  a  divine  psychologist,  he  might  respect  him- 
self as  original,  as  elemental,  pure  cause.  When 
the  boy  is  called  down  for  the  motive  of  his  action, 
and  shouts  "  'Cause !"  he  claims  the  heart  and  truth 
of  being.  When  a  man,  thwarted,  baffled  in  his  most 
desperate  endeavor,  growls  through  set  teeth  his 
fervent  "God  damn!"  he  is  for  once  a  reality;  he 
gives  assurance  that  out  of  the  heart  of  Nature 
rolled  the  burden  of  the  Bible  old;  that  the  can- 
ticles of  love  and  woe  came  from  the  burning  core 
below ;  that  genius  builds  better  than  he  knows. 

I  saw  a  plainsman  involved  with  a  corral  of  wild 
horses.  Like  a  panther  he  encountered  a  huge  stal- 
lion. Seizing  his  mane  with  the  left  hand  he  grasped 
the  nose  of  the  beast  with  the  right,  and  was  borne 
along,  pounded  from  below  by  the  knees  of  the  crea- 
ture as  he  reared  and  plunged,  but  the  cowboy  kept 
his  hold,  and  with  ever-shortening  breath  protested, 
"Die  here!  die  here!" 

The  light,  the  vehemence  that  comes  from  beneath 
the  threshold  of  articulate  thought,  or  the  venereal 
orgasm  of  the  love  that  makes  the  world  go  round, 
is  it  not  heat  enough  for  cause?  Should  not  some- 
thing come  of  it?  When  we  reach  these  depths  of 
feeling  do  we  not  touch  bottom?  Are  they  not  "suf- 
ficient reason"? 

But  now  Citizen  Kant  had  not  the  nerve  to  leave 
reason,  our  highest  attribute  and  sublimest  essence, 
at  such  an  anomalous  outcome  as  this ;  he  had  neither 
the  courage  nor  the  patience  to  appear  the  subtle 
agnostic  genius  that  he  really  was.  There  was  no 
sustaining  audience  for  the  most  expert  metaphysi- 
cian in  mental  history.  The  Prussian  bureaucracy 


104  PLURIVERSE 

and  the  Lutheran  orthodoxy  overshadowed  his  in- 
dividual prestige.  What  then?  What  but  a  further 
demonstration  of  his  skill,  by  showing  that  there  is  a 
counterpoising  answer  to  all  his  charges  against 
pure  reason,  a  "moral"  answer,  complacent  to  the 
religion  of  his  nation  (which  Hume  made  light  of), 
to  be  won  out  of  the  heart  and  conscience  of  the 
people  —  a  practical  as  against  a  theoretical  judg- 
ment! What  then  but  a  rank  stultification  of  the 
very  reason  that  proposed  it  —  a  relief  from  the 
agonism  of  intelligence  for  a  true  vision  of  itself, 
by  a  cringing  faith  in  a  superstitious  authority? 
Thus  as  a  benevolent  hypocrite  ("corrupt,"  as 
Schopenhauer  characterized  him,  showing  that  in 
his  revoke  Kant  had  repressed  some  fifty-seven  of 
the  most  liberal  pages  of  his  work),  he  exploited  the 
sense  of  "duty,"  the  subservience  forced  upon  human 
weakness  by  an  overpowering  environment,  as  a 
"categorical  imperative":  "thou  shalt,"  and  "thou 
canst  because  thou  oughtst"  —  this  although  Luther 
himself  had  well  said  before,  "There  is  no  logical 
connection  between  can  and  ought."  But  our  apolo- 
gist would  hold  no  controversy  as  to  how  this  sense  of 
duty  and  the  "ought"  originated:  it  was  there,  and 
there  was  the  end. 

Though  there  truly  were  such  a  humiliating  sense 
of  subserviency  it  should  be  regarded  only  as  an 
unfortunate  handicap,  indefensibly  embarrassing  ex- 
planatory thought.  And  while  urging  this  moral 
sense  of  duty,  obviously  and  undoubtedly  in  behalf 
of  the  prevailing  view  of  Christianity,  he  seemed 
as  having  never  heard  the  name  of  Jesus,  who  of 
all  the  race  was  the  most  distinguishably  first  to 


CAUSE  105 

deny  the  self-sufficiency,  the  essential  self-grounded- 
ness  by  which  alone  knowledge,  as  the  science  of 
science,  would  be  philosophically  possible.  [If  the 
name  of  Jesus  appears  in  the  800  pages  of  the 
"Critique  of  Pure  Reason"  I  have  overlooked  it.] 

That  Kant  was  weak,  if  not  quite  disingenuous 
in  his  quasi  conformity,  appears  in  an  inconsistency 
too  rank  to  pass  for  mere  inadvertence  in  so  clear 
a  mind.  There  can  be  duty  only  as  to  acknowledged 
superiority ;  but  Kant's  "reason,"  despite  his  fling  at 
it  as  in  conflict  with  itself,  was  as  spontaneous  and 
autonomous  in  his  account  of  knowledge,  the  dog- 
matic primate  of  first  principles,  the  unconditioned 
referee  of  all  metaphysical  controversy,  who  should 
impose  all  duties  and  defer  to  none.  The  supreme 
may  not  subserve;  so  that  his  "categorical  impera- 
tive" can  be  recognized  only  by  an  intelligence  either 
incompetent  or  stultified ;  it  should  as  well  determine 
justice  as  cognition  in  its  own  case.  Only  his  arrant 
slave  should  feel  a  sense  of  duty;  the  great  man's 
"ought"  should  be  divinely  his  own,  if  reason  is  the 
true  first  principle. 

It  will  appear  in  our  notice  of  self-relation  that 
Kant  utterly  disqualified  the  psychological  illusion 
of  "self-consciousness"  from  which  popular  theology 
infers  its  notion  of  "free  will"  —  the  same  which 
Kant  invoked  for  his  "thou  canst  because  thou 
oughtst."  But  it  is  relevant  here  to  recall  from 
history  and  poetry  instances  of  the  divine  "impera- 
tive" and  the  higher  law,  where  great  spirits  have 
taken  fate  in  their  own  hands,  and  assumed  the 
judgment  of  justice  itself,  and  law.  For  the  law 
says  well,  "Thou  shalt  not  kill" ;  but  where  was  law, 


106  PLURIVERSE 

or  justice,  or  any  exoteric  imperative,  when  Virgin- 
ius  drove  home  the  flesher's  knife  into  the  bosom  of 
his  daughter,  and  the  flow  of  her  young  blood  re- 
newed pulsation  in  the  stagnant  heart  of  Rome?  Or 
when  sad  Andronicus  enacted  the  same  tragedy  with 
his  daughter  Lavinia  ?  We  recognize  here  the  auton- 
omous first  principle,  the  dogmatic  imperative  of 
the  theoretical  reason,  but  the  "ought"  that  shall 
subserve  any  alien  category  has  sunk  to  insignifi- 
cance. What  shall  impose  a  duty  on  the  divine  and 
highest  ?  Shall  he  not  do  as  he  will  with  his  own  — 
even  with  his  life? 

We  had  an  eminent  literary  recognition  of  divine 
independence  in  an  obviously  second  thought  of  Ten- 
nyson, as  correcting  his  poem  "Lucretius"  —  not 
only  in  the  hero's  taking  his  own  life,  but  in  his  re- 
sentment of  any  imposition  of  duty  upon  his  action. 
As  first  published  the  final  paragraph  of  "Lucretius" 
read  as  follows : 

With  that  he  drove  the  knife  into  his  side. 
She  heard  him  raging,  heard  him  fall  —  ran  in, 
Beat  breast,  tore  hair,  cried  out  upon  herself 
As  having  failed  in  duty  to  him  —  shrieked 
That  she  but  meant  to  win  him  back  —  fell  on  him, 
Clasped,  kissed  him,  wailed;  he  answered:  "Care  not 

thou. 
What  matters?     All  is  over.     Fare  thee  well" 

I  could  not  resist  the  impulse  to  congratulate  the 
distinguished  poet  on  this  amendment,  and  his  lord- 
ship graciously  responded:  "In  'Lucretius,5  'What 
is  duty?5  was  the  first  reading;  it  was  changed  be- 
cause I  could  not  find  that  Lucretius  had  anywhere 


CAUSE  107 

used  the  word  'duty'  in  that  sense ;  but  it  stands  now 
as  at  first." 

[An  anecdote  of  Dr.  Stirling.] 

I  have  to  recall  an  incident  of  the  life  of  Dr. 
Stirling  as  having  philosophical  interest,  in  that  it 
seems  to  demonstrate  the  psychological  effect  of  the 
habit  of  transcendental  thought  upon  practical 
affairs. 

The  learned  doctor  was  veiy  good  to  me  in  his 
day,  corresponding  freely  and  sending  me  his  works, 
and  indeed  in  his  last  book,  "What  Is  Thought?" 
over-crediting  me  as  "the  authority"  upon  modern 
mysticism.  He  had  achieved  a  considerable  success 
through  his  literary  ventures,  especially  his  "Secret 
of  Hegel"  and  his  translation  of  Schwegler's  "His- 
tory of  Philosophy,"  and  it  happened  that  he  had 
on  his  hands  some  £4,000  which  he  desired  to  profit- 
ably invest. 

Now  here  begins  our  moral.  Of  course  the  busi- 
ness world  has  developed  a  general  conception  of 
investment,  which  involves  the  agency  of  a  profes- 
sional broker  —  such  is  the  conventional  method,  and 
so  far  well;  so  he  placed  his  £4,000  in  the  hands  of 
a  broker.  And  conceptually  a  broker  is  a  broker; 
as  concepts  there  is  no  difference  between  brokers. 
But  a  canny  Scot,  even  an  LL.D.  in  metaphysics, 
should  have  been  supposed  to  be  alert  to  the  percep- 
tual and  pragmatic  difference  underlying  the  tran- 
scendental concept,  broker;  unfortunately  in  this 
case  the  broker  was  a  rascal,  who  abused  the  con- 
fidence unavoidable  in  his  profession  by  misplacing 
the  money,  undoubtedly  through  a  collusion  intended 
for  his  own  ultimate  advantage. 


108  PLURIVERSE 

Still  untaught  by  this  too  frequent  experience,  our 
transcendental  dabbler  in  "business"  resorted  to  the 
next  conventional  method  of  righting  a  wrong:  he 
employed  a  lawyer  to  make  application  to  the  courts. 
But  the  concept  "lawyer"  is  not  less  general  than  the 
concept  "broker."  Any  honest  expert  would  have 
told  him  that  a  breach  of  confidence  is  fatal,  and 
that  he  had  "lost"  his  money ;  but  he  persisted,  still 
sending  good  money  after  bad,  until,  in  spirit  at 
least,  he  was  nearly  a  broken  man. 

He  sent  a  laborious  account  of  the  proceedings 
in  the  trial,  still  arguing  against  the  errors  of  even 
the  Court  himself.  I  responded  with  encourage- 
ment, not  indeed  for  the  lost  cause,  but  as  contem- 
plating for  him  a  series  of  lectures  in  America, 
assuring  him  that  our  people  loved  a  foreign  celeb- 
rity quite  as  clearly  as  a  Briton  loves  a  lord.  At 
first  he  seriously  considered  the  undertaking,  but  I 
suspect  that  his  keenness  and  his  discomfiture  alike 
were  soothed  to  inactivity  by  reflections  upon  the 
good  company  in  which  I  took  pains  to  place  him 
and  his  misfortunes.  Had  not  Sir  Walter  Scott 
embarrassed  himself  and  recovered?  Had  not  Mark 
Twain  retreived  a  fortune  lost  in  attempting  pilot- 
age through  currents  wholly  strange  to  him?  And 
as  for  being  done  out  of  his  money,  he  had  but  to 
think  of  our  General  Grant:  credited  with  the  con- 
quest of  the  great  Rebellion,  given  a  warship  in 
which  to  junket  around  the  globe,  as  the  nation's 
ambassador  and  the  honored  guest  at  every  foreign 
court,  he  returned  only  to  show  his  transcendental 
unfitness  to  the  working  world.  He  entrusted  to  a 
rascal  the  use  of  his  signature,  and  became  involved 


CAUSE  109 

for  ten  times  your  £4,000,  and  then,  with  a  virulent 
cancer  gnawing  at  his  throat,  he  put  the  last  of  his 
indomitable  energy  into  a  book  that  cancelled  all  his 
obligations,  so  fraudulently  imposed,  and  scored  his 
untarnished  signature  among  the  few,  the  immortal 
names  that  were  not  born  to  die. 

I  heard  no  more  of  the  lecture  course,  but  in  the 
last  of  his  letters,  after  a  humorous  protest  at  hav- 
ing to  pay  extra  postage  on  my  last  advice,  he 
woulded  to  God  that  he  might  again  get  so  much  con- 
sideration at  any  price. 


CHAPTER   V 
SELF-RELATION 

WE  have  seen  Kant,  ignoring  the  value  of 
things  in  themselves,  with  equal  disregard 
tossing  the  cause  of  them  to  an  irrespon- 
sible and  libertine  spontaneity.  He  was  but  a  Phaen- 
arete,  an  accoucheur,  whose  vocation  was  to  insure 
the  proper  delivery  of  conceptions.  But  his  in- 
genuity and  success,  especially  at  a  time  when  phil- 
osophy had  outworn  its  welcome  in  esoteric  circles, 
roused  in  more  ardent  spirits  a  curiosity,  not  only 
as  to  things  in  themselves  but  as  to  the  origin  of  the 
principle  of  knowledge  itself,  of  which  Kant  had  so 
cleverly  delineated  the  logical  form.  They  revived 
the  ancient  interest  in  the  relation  of  thought  and 
being,  and  in  subjective  cause. 

The  quest  of  these  aspirants  was  the  meaning  of 
absolute  principle;  not  so  specially  of  a  supreme 
principle,  but  of  any  rational  principle.  Thereto- 
fore thought  had  affected  objective  principle,  or 
cause;  it  had  looked  only  outward;  it  had  no  re- 
source but  to  an  Other ;  and  the  other  called  for  still 
another  indefinitely.  A  crisis  came  in  the  convic- 
tion that  principle,  in  the  absolute,  must  be  its  own 
other,  in  itself  and  for  itself  at  once,  a  self-relation 
—  if  such  were  possible. 

110 


SELF-RELATION  111 

We  stay  our  leading  for  a  moment  here  to  say 
that  self-relation  is  the  Ultima  Thule  of  philosophy 
—  a  land  that  should  be,  by  the  legends,  but  which, 
by  the  bearings  of  the  compass,  has  not  been  charted 
yet. 

The  reader  who  has  been  thwarted  and  confused 
in  his  commendable  ambition  to  understand  German 
philosophy  shall  be  advised  that  the  main  cause  of 
his  discomfiture  was  the  expert  presumption  of  self- 
relation;  and  the  hope  is  here  indulged  that  as  a 
consequence  of  this  treatise  he  may  well  throw  down 
and  disregard  any  work  that  proceeds  upon  its  ad- 
mission —  either  as  self-consciousness,  self-knowl- 
edge, self-sustenance,  self-cause,  or  any  other  rela- 
tion to  self.  The  fact  shall  appear,  in  citation  of 
the  most  approved  of  thinkers,  ancient  and  modern, 
that  there  is  no  such  possibility  as  a  self-relation. 

The  leanest  metaphysician  who  ever  entertained 
the  conception  of  a  whole,  and  the  clumsiest  me- 
chanic who  ever  built  a  machine  that  would  "work," 
will  concur  upon  four  necessary  requisites  of  total- 
ity: there  is  no  other  outside  it;  its  comprehension 
shall  include  that  which  comprehends ;  if  it  is  known, 
or  determined,  or  sustained,  all  these  effects  it  must 
produce  for  itself;  if  it  has  or  ever  had  a  cause  it 
is  and  was  "causa  sui" 

The  whole  cannot  have  become,  for  various  rea- 
sons: for  one,  becoming  is  a  process,  and  the 
whole  could  not  partly  be ;  for  another,  even  as  time, 
to  begin,  assumes  as  already  a  time  in  which  to 
begin,  so  a  concrete  world  as  becoming  requires  an 
ideal  void,  a  space-world  to  receive  it. 

If  self-relation  were  the  first  principle  it  should 


112  PLURIVERSE 

seem  that  men,  who  have  somehow  the  good  fortune 
to  live,  would  only  voluntarily  die.  But  so  far  is 
this  from  the  fact  of  man's  condition  that  a  cartoon- 
ist might  cleverly  depict  him  as  one  of  those  gyro- 
scopic toys  that  we  have  seen  attached  to  a  stove- 
pipe, in  which  a  manikin  model  appears  as  mightily 
cranking  the  wheel  above,  which  in  fact  is  actuating 
him.  Indeed,  the  materialist  might  cartoon  the 
idealist  as  functioning  in  a  similar  delusion  —  seem- 
ing to  posit  the  world  that  sustains  him,  or  to  fur- 
nish through  a  bellows  the  breath  that  inspires  him. 
Men,  and  not  the  worst  of  men  at  that,  have  been 
so  conventionalized  by  social  necessities  as  to  feel 
that  it  is  one's  handkerchief  that  blows  one's  nose. 
Why  not,  since  nothing  is  something  in  the  pro- 
fessional necessity  of  discourse? 

It  will  be  seen  in  a  criticism  of  "truth"  that  the 
baffling  obduracy  of  the  philosophical  problem  lies 
in  the  coincident  necessity  and  impossibility  of  self- 
relation. 

Truth  should  be  what  it  never  is.  It  must  be 
of  knowledge,  and  knowledge  of  somewhat  that  is ; 
it  is  not  itself  ostensibly  that  somewhat,  nor  a 
property  of  it,  but  it  guarantees  a  claim  that  some- 
what (as  knowledge,  or  copy,  or  statement)  repre- 
sents it.  Now  to  represent  the  somewhat  fairly, 
in  a  copy,  were  very  well,  very  practical  and  plaus- 
ible; but  "very  well"  will  not  serve;  a  fair  copy  is 
admissible  as  such,  but  your  "truth"  is  precisely 
what  any  copy  lacks  of  the  original ;  for  thus  the 
original  is  made  no  better  than  an  imitation ;  original 
merit,  that  may  be  unique,  is  disqualified  by  a  pre- 
tended re-presentation. 


SELF-RELATION  113 

Truth  requires  that  knowledge  shall  be  equal  to 
reality  —  which  it  cannot  be,  save  as  identical  with 
it  —  and  then  there  is  no  relation  between  the  knower 
and  the  known  (there  is  no  truth  where  there  is  no 
knowledge)  ;  no  truth  unless  the  identical  knows  it- 
self. 

It  is  very  obvious  that  the  notion  of  truth  grew 
out  of  the  failure,  or  at  least  the  suspicion  of  knowl- 
edge. Making  many  mistakes  himself,  and  misled 
by  the  machinations  of  others  —  waking  and  sleep- 
ing and  forgetting,  all  involuntarily  —  a  man  is 
entitled  to  question  his  facts  not  only,  but  his  in- 
telligence itself.  Such  questioning  in  due  time 
evolved  the  abstraction,  truth,  as  challenging  all  pre- 
tensions of  knowledge;  and  thus  came  philosophy, 
with  all  its  complications  of  being  and  knowing, 
reality  and  appearance,  etc. 

It  were  a  natural  thought,  that  there  is  no  call 
to  make  difficulties,  or  to  find  problems  or  puzzles 
in  this  simple  fact  of  knowing,  or  to  make  criterions 
and  distinctions  in  knowing;  but  we  find  that  there 
are  difficulties  in  the  way  of  absolute  definition  and 
distinction.  Things  will  not  lie  still  and  be  identi- 
fied. Each  is  for  all;  "nothing  is  fair  or  good 
alone." 

This  fatality  is  instantly  detected  when  the  pro- 
fessors set  out  to  tell  off-hand,  in  a  popular  way,  the 
meanings  of  words.  Webster's  Dictionary  was  be- 
gun in  1828,  and  has  since  been  enlarged  under  the 
vigilance  and  assiduity  of  more  than  fifty  distin- 
guished scholars,  all  eager,  doubtless,  to  tell  the 
truth;  but  the  reader  shall  judge,  from  what  should 
be  one  of  their  capital  definitions,  how  little  care  or 


114  PLURIVERSE 

sympathy  these  scholars  had  for  the  problem  which 
haunts  our  troublesome  essay.  We  quote  their  defi- 
nition of  truth: 

"TRUTH.  —  The  quality  of  being  true;  as  (a) 
conformity  to  fact  or  reality ;  exact  accordance  with 
that  which  is,  has  been,  or  shall  be." 

How  happy  the  philosopher  might  be  if  the  world- 
secret  could  be  adroitly  told  with  the  dash  and 
abandon  of  this  forthright  deliverance ! 

Does  conformity  embrace  all  the  possible  truth 
and  essence  of  fact  and  reality?  Has  all  their  mat- 
ter gone  up  into  form,  and  left  no  substance  to  be 
identified,  realized  and  lived?  Fact  and  reality 
cover  being  alone;  they  leave  out  thought  and  rela- 
tion and  difference,  which  are  not  properties  of 
factual  things,  any  more  than  are  illusions  and  nega- 
tions and  nonentities.  It  might  seem  a  better  defi- 
nition of  truth  to  call  it,  not  conformity,  but  iden- 
tity with  fact  and  reality ;  but  when  we  turn  to  their 
definition  of  identity  we  receive  a  slap  from  Sir  Wil- 
liam Hamilton:  "Identity  is  a  relation  between  our 
cognitions  of  things,  not  between  things  themselves." 
But  in  any  explanation,  are  not  these  cognitions  to 
be  things  of  themselves,  even  if  mere  spectres?  The 
fact  is  that  philosophers  as  a  class  give  truth  a 
sinister  fling  in  quotation  marks,  as  a  word  for  the 
people,  and  not  for  the  elect.  The  reason  for  this 
is  that  they  find  knowledge  a  gift  that  has  no  con- 
firmation of  its  pretensions  —  especially  none  from 
itself,  its  only  possible  critic.  It  tries,  but  fails, 
to  focus  its  faculties  upon  itself.  In  identity  it 
finds  at  best  the  same,  and  the  same  is  another: 
there  needs  two  for  sameness.  And  when  all  is  said, 


SELF-RELATION  115 

difference  has  as  good  an  identity  as  sameness,  and 
sameness  has  "all  the  difference  in  the  world"  from 
difference. 

Then  as  to  truth  being  "accordance  to  that  which 
is,  has  been,  or  shall  be,"  does  it  accord  in  these 
vital  respects,  that  it  has  been,  or  shall  be,  as 
really  as  it  is  now?  And  what  shall  accord  to  what 
is  —  to  all  that  is  ?  Unless  all  that  is  can  accord 
to  itself  in  that  self-relation  which  our  authorities 
shall  keenly  resent.  And  again  as  to  "accordance 
to  what  is,  has  been  or  shall  be,"  we  might  suggest 
a  few  things  that  ought  to  be,  at  least  in  definition 
of  truth.  Hegel,  in  his  definition  of  truth,  held 
frankly  to  the  self-relation:  "Science  does  not  seek 
truth:  it  is  in  truth;  it  is  the  truth." 

That  there  is  such  a  possibility  as  rational  self- 
relation  is  a  notion  taken  from  popular  psychology, 
assumed  from  empirical  "self-consciousness,"  so 
called.  Plato,  as  I  will  notice,  had  no  serious  use 
for  this  conception  of  the  "self-moved,"  except  as  a 
tentative  prop  for  the  doctrine  of  the  immortality 
of  the  soul ;  for  recalling  in  his  "Phaedrus"  the  same 
notion  (the  self-moved)  he  cast  it  aside  with  some- 
thing less  than  approval,  saying  wearily:  "Enough 
of  the  immortality  of  the  soul !"  He  had  probably 
no  conviction  in  regard  to  it ;  and  when  the  topic  of 
mental  self-relation  came  specifically  before  him, 
as  where  in  "Charmides"  he  raised  the  question  of  a 
"science  of  science,"  otherwise  "self-consciousness," 
he  made  it  ridiculous,  as  I  will  amply  show.  I  will 
show  also  how  Kant,  Plume  and  others  have  utterly 
disqualified  it.  Before  we  come  to  that  citation, 
however,  we  must  appreciate  the  agonism  of  con- 


116  PLURIVERSE 

troversy  which  self-relation,  as  subject-object,  has 
occasioned. 

We  must  first  more  clearly  define  self-relation. 
There  is  a  wide  though  illusive  difference  between 
anything  regarded  as  moving  itself  and  as  moving 
of  itself  —  which  last,  as  his  whole  context  shows, 
was  Plato's  intention.  Any  principle  must  move  of 
itself  as  excluding  all  outside  influence ;  and  why  the 
principle,  as  objectively  regarded,  so  moves,  is  left 
by  all  philosophy  as  the  secret  of  the  divine  nature 
or  power  of  the  world — at  least,  no  explanation  of  it 
is  technically  proposed.  But  in  the  proposition  that 
it  "moves  itself,"  not  only  is  outside  assistance  ex- 
cluded, but  the  principle  is  actively  a  divinity  in  and 
for  itself. 

Now  as  we  have  the  ineluctable  fact  of  the  world, 
to  be  acknowledged  and  accounted  for  as  best  it  may, 
and  as  reason  is  our  only  recourse,  and  as  God  and 
man  are  the  only  intelligences  to  which  we  may  hope- 
fully resort,  we  have  the  alternative  of  preferring 
either,  or  of  dividing  the  onus  of  the  Mystery  be- 
tween them  —  *.  e.,  between  the  monads  of  the  Many 
and  the  supremacy  of  the  One. 

Jesus  said,  "As  the  Father  hath  life  in  himself, 
so  hath  he  given  to  the  Son  to  have  life  in  himself." 
—  "To  them  gave  he  power  to  become  sons  of  God, 
even  they  who  believe  on  his  name." 

And  here  I  must  profess  a  certain  indifference,  so 
far  as  explanation  is  concerned.  There  is  a  very 
gratuitous  skepticism  of  "miracles,"  as  arising 
among  powers  or  creatures  unwarrantably  con- 
demned as  of  course  secondary  and  barren.  With 
the  great  miracle  or  mystery  of  the  whole  freely  and 


SELF-RELATION  117 

generally  acknowledged,  I  am  so  much  the  pluralist 
as  to  see  no  fatal  discrepancy  in  a  participation  of 
it  by  the  parts ;  and  this  indeed  seems  ostensibly  ad- 
mitted in  any  doctrine  of  responsible  free  wills.  My 
philosophy  balks  at  self-relation  either  as  divine 
or  human.  And  German  philosophy,  too  practical 
to  insist  that  any  entity  can  lift  itself  by  the  straps 
of  its  own  boots,  has  overborne  the  human  ego  and 
its  determining  organization,  and  advanced  to  the 
presumption  of  a  "universal"  ego  as  subject-object 
—  rather  an  institution  or  an  atmosphere  than  a 
normal  personality,  in  a  purely  transcendental  field, 
a  conception  of  mere  language  and  logic,  as  we  shall 
find,  having  no  authentic  ground  in  perceptual  ex- 
perience —  a  field  which  Kant  had  spent  his  best 
efforts  in  disqualifying  by  "the  sure  method  of  a 
science."  The  fatal  fault  of  the  whole  dialectic  in- 
dustry is  the  obsession  that  besides  all  fact  there  is  an 
explanation,  a  self-relation,  that  shall  satisfy  our 
finitude  in  the  cosmos,  however  contradictory  its 
expression  may  appear.  The  extravagance,  the  will- 
ful blindness  with  which  post-Kantian  philosophy 
exalted  this  universal  self-related  ego  above  all  em- 
pirical mechanism  and  common  sense  evolved  and 
published  expressions  almost  outrageous.  Witness 
the  following  sentence  from  Hegel's  private  outline 
of  his  lectures  at  Nurnberg  in  1808-11 :  "But  the 
Mind,  according  to  its  self-activity  within  itself  in 
relation  to  itself  independent  of  all  relation  to  others, 
is  considered  in  the  Science  of  Mind  proper,  or 
'Psychology.'  " 

In  his  practice  Hegel  rather  avoided  responsibility 
for  that  instant  and  constant  self-relation  which  a 


118  PLURIVERSE 

mechanic  would  scout,  and  rather,  as  in  his  "Phenom- 
enology of  Spirit,"  made  the  soul  take  up  its  vari- 
ous attributes  successively  as  partial  phases,  "un- 
til finally"  all  difference  between  subject  and  object 
is  eliminated.  This  doing  by  pieces  the  problem 
of  the  absorption  of  an  entity  by  itself  only  post- 
poned the  whole  difficulty  of  the  original  problem  to 
the  last  phase,  which  for  its  own  part  had  no  piece 
but  itself  to  work  upon,  and  so  the  "finality"  satis- 
fied the  whole  inconsequent  process.  But  Hegel 
knew  that  the  endless  future  will  never  test  his 
finality!  We  may  see  how  clumsily,  and  ail-but 
cavalierly,  he  treated  self-relation  in  his  "Logic," 
when  defining  "truth": 

"In  common  life  we  call  truth  the  agreement  be- 
tween an  object  and  our  conception  of  the  object. 
We  thus  presuppose  an  object  to  which  our  con- 
ception must  conform.  In  the  philosophical  sense 
of  the  word,  on  the  other  hand,  truth  may  be  de- 
scribed, in  a  general  an  done-sided  way  (  !) ,  as  the 
agreement  of  the  subject  matter  of  thought  with 
itself."  He  says  elsewhere:  "Science  does  not  seek 
truth,  but  is  in  the  truth,  and  is  the  truth  itself." 

(Kant  himself  had  forecast  a  countenance  for 
this  maladroit  proceeding  by  a  doubtless  inadvertent 
proposition  —  in  "intensive  quantity"  —  that  real- 
ity could  fade  to  zero  "by  degrees."  The  practical 
mind  must  see  that  the  last  degree,  be  it  ever  so 
minute,  reserves  in  its  wholeness  all  the  degrees  of 
infinite  divisibility.  Any  perceptible  degree  must 
carry  a  gross  bulk  under  the  metaphysical  micro- 
scope.) 
The  Johannine  proem  ("In  the  beginning  was  the 


SELF-RELATION  119 

Word,"  etc.),  which,  except  the  question  of  Pilate, 
"What  is  truth?"  Fichte  valued  as  the  text  of  the 
Christian  Scriptures  having  the  most  special  philo- 
sophical appeal,  is  indeed  a  most  affirmative  counter- 
part of  Aristotle's  doctrine  of  matter  and  form,  later 
repeated  in  Kant's  exposition  of  sense  and  under- 
standing. As  was  Dasein  to  Sein  (for  Fichte), 
thought  to  being,  form  to  matter,  difference  to  iden- 
tity, so  for  John  (as  for  Swedenborg)  was  the 
Word,  the  logos,  the  manifestation  and  presence,  to 
the  divine  essence.  All  things  were  made,  or  are 
such,  through  and  by  this  expression;  this  is  the 
light  of  the  world,  by  reason  of  which  identity  at- 
tains distinction,  or  God,  whom  otherwise  no  man 
hath  seen  at  any  time,  is  manifested  in  flesh  and 
spirit. 

It  is  wonderfully  suggestive  of  the  homogeneity  of 
intelligence,  to  observe  how  this  fine  conception  of 
the  existence  of  inherent  or  latent  being,  through  its 
manifestation  in  form,  or  knowledge,  has  come  to 
men  of  genius  regardless  of  each  other.  Fichte  gave 
no  credit  to  Aristotle's  explanation  of  nature  as 
matter  grading  up  to  form;  and  in  noticing  St. 
John's  doctrine  of  all  things  becoming  through  the 
Word  he  made  no  mention  of  Swedenborg  on  the 
same  lines,  but  claimed  (as  he  doubtless  believed) 
that  his  doctrine  was  "now  for  the  first  time  scien- 
tifically set  forth." 

The  truth  is  that  Swedenborg's  exegesis, 
whether  from  insight  or  inspiration,  was  at  once  the 
clearest  and  profoundest  of  them  all.  He  explains 
that  by  definition  things  become,  and  that  definition 
is  a  mental  act.  It  is  by  definition  as  the  Word  that 


120  PLURIVERSE 

things  come  out  of  latent  being,  into  existence  as 
knowledge  and  form.  It  is  through  definition  by  the 
Word  that  the  One,  whom  none  hath  seen  at  any 
time,  becomes  the  Many  of  things  and  souls. 

But  our  instant  concern  with  Fichte  is  that  per- 
version of  consciousness  into  self-relation  which  dis- 
tinguished him  as  the  primate  of  that  absolute 
idealism  which  staggered  the  sanity  of  his  generation, 
exhausted  his  own  patience  if  not  his  mental  force, 
and  humiliated  his  imperious  spirit  to  the  faith  and 
docility  of  the  natural  man. 

This  implicit  emphasis  of  self-relation  as  science 
of  science  began  with  Fichte  in  his  "Vocation  of 
Man"  as  self-conscious: 

"Thou  seest,  thou  nearest,  thou  f eelest ;  also  thou 
thinkest.  Thou  hast  also  a  consciousness  of  thy  see- 
ing, hearing,  feeling  and  thinking,  and  thereby  thou 
perceivest  an  object.  Thou  couldst  not  perceive  it 
without  this  consciousness.  Thou  canst  not  recog- 
nize an  object  by  sight  or  hearing  or  feeling,  with- 
out knowing  that  thou  seest,  or  hearest,  or  feelest  it. 
The  immediate  consciousness  of  thyself  is  therefore 
the  imperative  condition  of  all  other  consciousness, 
and  thou  knowest  a  thing  only  in  that  and  so  far 
as  thou  knowest  that  thou  knowest  it ;  no  element  can 
enter  the  former  cognition  that  is  not  contained  in 
the  latter.  Thou  canst  not  know  anything  save  as 
knowing  that  thou  knowest  it." 

This  subtle  and  plausible  appeal  to  unsophisti- 
cated experience,  whereby  cognition  (a  miracle  in  it- 
self) is  doubled  and  meretriciously  explained  as  re- 
cognition, is  the  entering  wedge  of  absolute  idealism, 
disrupting  Kant's  "unknown  root,"  flippantly 


SELF-RELATION  121 

thrusting  into  the  ego  of  common  consciousness  the 
mystery  that  can  be  thought  only  as  the  Supreme, 
and  thenceforth  exalting  speculation  from  the  em- 
pirical ego  to  an  ego  universal  —  and  transcendental. 
But  the  sure  method  of  Kant,  that  will  not  permit 
this  light-winged  concept  to  rise  without  the  em- 
pirical percept  of  given  experience  (and  thus  to 
sunder  the  twin  stems  of  sense  and  understanding), 
drags  it  back  under  the  insuperable  criticism  of  the 
present  tense,  and  arrests  this  arrogant  self-relation 
with  the  question  whether  it  is  indeed  instantly  such, 
and  whether  this  "knowing  that  it  knows"  is  not 
rather  a  quick  remembering  that  it  knew.  Science 
and  speculation  cannot  overbear  the  rational  neces- 
sities of  a  present  tense.  Assume  as  we  may  that  the 
past  is  gone  and  the  future  has  yet  to  come,  and  that 
only  the  present  instant  is  real,  we  have  to  compro- 
mise the  static  and  dynamic  viewpoints  —  to  draw 
upon  both  the  past  and  the  future,  to  get  a  foothold 
for  reality  at  all. 

Our  most  careful  metaphysicians  have  agreed  that 
for  us  there  is  no  being  or  thinking  without  the 
lapse,  the  Heraclitic  flux.  The  present  tense,  which 
presumptively  carries  all  reality,  is  mused  of  as  a 
platform  loaded  with  the  increment  of  the  process 
of  becoming  and  a  residuum  of  the  process  of  de- 
parting —  a  platform  on  which  the  serpent  truth 
has  ample  room  and  verge  enough  to  take  its  tail  in 
its  mouth  and  do  the  acrobatic  stunt  of  swallowing 
itself  without  disappearing.  But  reflection,  second 
thought,  will  have  all  that  is  sensible  also  divisible. 
Your  non-existent  past  and  future  demand,  what  is 
between  us  ?  How  do  we  have  names,  if  we  have  no 


122  PLURIVERSE 

part  in  reality?  Your  present,  if  substantial  and 
sensible,  has  its  older  and  younger  sides,  and  only 
an  ideal  line  or  division  between  them  can  be  strictly 
real,  in  the  infinite  divisibility  of  the  material.  The 
present,  as  real,  is  to  be  sought  down  the  bottomless 
well  of  Democritus.  How  then  does  the  present 
sustain  itself?  How  does  truth  climb  out  of  this 
bottomless  well?  ...  It  must  be  by  some  art  of 
livelihood;  it  is  the  trick  of  the  chimney-sweep,  who 
has  neither  foothold  nor  handhold,  but  climbs  by 
the  lateral  impact  of  his  elbows  and  his  knees.1 

It  should  be  obvious  that  the  attempt  to  construe 
self-relation  in  the  instant  present  tense,  as  an  essen- 
tiality without  lapse  or  passage  of  time,  is  a  failure, 
and  that  "self-consciousness,"  as  a  knowing  that  you 
know,  is  an  implication  of  memory  and  anticipation. 
The  language  of  the  proposition  stultifies  it.  Why, 
in  knowing,  know  that  you  know?  Is  not  simple 
knowing  sufficiently  wonderful,  without  invoking  its 
second  power?  or  why  not  invoke  the  third  power, 
and  say  that  we  know  that  in  knowing  we  know  that 
we  know?  This  reiteration  neither  adds  to  nor  ac- 
counts for  the  simple  gift  of  knowledge. 

This  is  the  central  crux  of  all  philosophy,  and  of 
religion  as  well,  that  knowledge  and  will  are  second- 
ary, and  not  essentially  grounded;  and  although 
Jesus  was  the  first  to  utilize  the  insight  for  the  re- 
lief of  human  conscience,  Plato  had  exhausted  the 
topic  metaphysically  some  400  years  before  Jesus 
was  born. 

The  divine  Greek,  in  his  "Charmides,"  treated  the 
problem  of  self-relation  as  it  is  involved  in  the 

i  See  further  in  our  Chapter  IX,  on  "Ancillary  Unity." 


SELF-RELATION  123 

proposition  of  a  science  of  science,  or  popularly, 
self-consciousness.  He  covered  it  both  mathemati- 
cally and  pragmatically.  To  test  the  vulgar  illusion 
of  a  man's  knowing  himself  he  exchanged  the  word 
knowing  for  excelling  —  a  concept  of  the  same  order, 
whose  percept  may  have  a  tangible  quality  and  quan- 
tity which  consciousness  lacks  —  and  then  argued 
that  anything  instantly  excelling  itself  would  be  at 
once  greater  and  less  than  itself,  and  so  mathe- 
matically impossible. 

Our  English  Jowett,  translator  of  Plato,  empha- 
sizes with  a  footnote  this  very  palpable  hit. 

Plato  then  subjects  the  topic  to  his  usual  Socra- 
tic  method.  Self-consciousness  will  infer  a  science 
of  science  itself.  Now  every  science  can  be  taught, 
and  its  interest  will  assure  and  benefit  professors. 
The  physician  knows  and  lives  by  the  science  of 
healing,  the  cobbler  by  the  science  or  art  of  mend- 
ing; but  a  professor  of  the  science  would  have  no 
call ;  however  knowing,  he  knows  only  that  he  knows, 
and  would  be  as  useless  as  a  windmill  for  grinding 
the  wind  that  drives  it. 

It  is  not  a  natural  but  a  wholly  artificial  inge- 
nuity that  deduces  self-determination  from  the  com- 
mon consciousness,  which  indeed  thinks  nothing  at 
all  about  it.  I  recall  that  Jonathan  Edwards  —  who 
had  but  the  natural  wit  where  dialectic  was  con- 
cerned —  in  his  treatise  on  the  "Freedom  of  the  Will" 
said  he  would  not  make  so  light  of  the  discretion  of 
"even  an  Arminian"  as  to  assume  that  by  self-de- 
termination (of  the  will)  he  meant  an  activity  of 
causing  it  to  act  (i.  e.,  by  a  self-relation), 
but  consented  that  he  should  intend  an  origi- 


124  PLURIVERSE 

nating  independent  principle;  for  he  would  credit 
his  opponents  with  knowing  the  fling  of  Thomas 
Hobbes,  which  was  as  follows : 

"The  question  is  not  whether  a  man  be  a  free 
agent,  that  is  to  say,  whether  he  can  write  or  for- 
bear, speak  or  be  silent,  according  to  his  will;  but 
whether  the  will  to  write  and  the  will  to  forbear  come 
upon  him  according  to  his  will,  or  according  to 
anything  else  in  his  own  power.  I  acknowledge  this 
liberty,  that  I  can  do  if  I  will;  but  to  say,  I  can 
will  if  I  will,  I  take  to  be  an  absurd  speech.  ...  A 
man  hath  freedom  to  do  if  he  will,  but  whether  he 
hath  freedom  to  will  (t.  e.  is  an  original  rather  than 
a  given  power)  is  a  question  which  it  seems  neither 
the  bishop  nor  they  ever  thought  on." 

Edwards  did  shrewdly  arraign  self-relation  in  the 
Calvinistic  interest  making  man  wholly  subject  to 
the  grace  of  God;  but  all  his  arguments  against 
human  originality  are  equally  cogent  against  origi- 
nal principle  in  any  case,  even  that  of  God.  And 
the  only  policy  or  "plan  of  salvation"  in  which 
man's  dependent  quality  was  useful  to  free  him  from 
the  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin,  to  be  borne  rather  by 
its  original  author  in  the  sole  vocation  of  Jesus  as 
a  divine  substitute,  seems  to  have  never  occurred  to 
him. 

In  attacking  the  problem  of  self-knowledge  Pro- 
fessor Ladd  first  staunches  his  nerve  with  a  back- 
ward glance  at  idealism  and  its  doctrine  that  ob- 
jects are  determined  by  (or  through)  the  subjective 
organs  (as  lenses,  or  functions  or  what  not),  and 
then  states  his  general  proposition  thus : 

"In  opposition  to  all  views  like  the  foregoing,  we 


SELF-RELATION  125 

desire  to  maintain  the  identity  of  knowledge  and  be- 
ing-as-known. .  .  .  What  is  first  of  all,  really  and 
indubitably  existent,  is  this  fact  of  knowledge.  .  .  . 
Self-consciousness  is ;  it  is  an  actual  datum ;  and  the 
very  attempt  to  be  skeptical  thereupon  does  but 
lead  to  confirmation  by  repetition  of  this  fact  of 
reality.  .  .  .  It  is  not  a  conclusion  drawn  in  the 
region  of  mere  thinking;  it  is  rather  a  rational  con- 
viction respecting  the  envisaged  reality  which  all 
knowledge  involves.  .  .  .  It  is  the  inevitable  pro- 
duct of  the  attempt  to  represent  in  terms  of  sensa- 
tion that  which  is  known  to  be  implicated  in  sense 
perception,  but  is  not  to  be  given  to  thought  in  terms 
of  sensation.  .  .  .  We  never  envisage  or  otherwise 
know,  in  its  naked  simplicity,  this  substance  of  the 
states  (self),  whether  physical  or  psychical.  It  can 
only  be  said  to  be  known  as  necessarily  implicated  to 
reason,  present  and  actually  existing.  .  .  .  Neither 
can  it  be  said  to  be  known  as  the  result  of  reasoning 
alone.  Knowledge  of  the  really  existent  follows 
upon  processes  of  analysis  and  synthesis  which  we 
may  feel  obliged  to  describe  as  involving  instinctive 
inference. 

"In  every  act  of  knowledge  through  self-conscious- 
ness the  subject  knowing  is  regarded  as  having  be- 
come the  object  of  knowledge  to  itself.  The  very 
essence  of  'self-consciousness'  is  that  the  subject 
knowing  and  the  object  known  are  one  and  the  same 
being. 

"We  may  be  unable  to  psychologically  explain 
the  fact  of  self-consciousness.  We  may  represent 
the  case  as  though  the  mind  could  never  so  far  catch 
up  with  itself  as  not  to  be  at  least  one  step  behind 


126  PLURIVERSE 

the  act  of  self-realization  in  the  unity  of  self-con- 
sciousness. But  neither  in  this  nor  in  any  other  way 
can  we  invalidate  the  primary  fact  of  knowledge, 
with  all  the  conviction  of  being  really  existent  which 
it  involves. 

"We  may  doubt  whether  the  being  that  now  knows 
is  the  same  being  as  that  which  knew  a  moment  since ; 
but  that  the  being  which,  as  subject,  knows  in  the 
self-consciousness  act,  is  really  one  and  the  same 
with  the  being  known,  as  object  in  the  selfsame  act, 
is  a  known  reality  which  it  is  impossible  to  doubt." 

Mr.  Ladd  has,  it  will  be  seen,  committed  himself 
to  the  infallibility  of  a  controversial  notion  not 
nearly  so  plausible  as  the  vulgar  intuition  that  the 
sun  goes  around  the  earth,  and  one  moreover  which 
the  history  of  speculation  so  eminently  confutes.  As 
for  the  impossibility  of  doubting  the  factual  reality 
of  self-relation,  the  following  citations  from  Kant, 
Hume  and  others  should  rather  show  it  impossible, 
at  least  for  a  scholar,  to  believe  in  it.  Professor 
Ladd's  own  halting  reservations  signalize  it  as 
merely  a  modus  vivendi  for  philosophy,  and  we  do 
not  see  the  necessity  for  that.  In  fact  Prof.  Ladd 
discounts  all  that  he  says  above: 

"The  mind  in  its  highest  and  wildest  flights  of  self- 
consciousness  never  knows  by  envisaging,  as  it  were 
(?),  its  own  simplicity  of  reality;  or  by  rationally 
attaching  to  any  particular  conception  which  it 
forms  of  itself  the  unquestionable  faith  of  intuitive 
self-knowledge." 

[This  is  to  say  that  the  transcendental  concept 
of  a  self-knowledge  has  no  percept  in  experience.] 

"Strictly  speaking,  knowledge  cannot  be  defined." 


SELF-RELATION  127 

[And  yet  it  is  self-known?]  "The  true  definition  of 
knowledge  would  be  a  highly  complicated  instance 
of  that  which  in  its  simplicity  we  seek  to  define." 
This  is  the  crux  precisely  —  the  ultimate  surd.1 

It  seems  hardly  necessary  here,  in  passing,  to  con- 
fess what  there  really  is  in  the  conceit  of  self-knowl- 
edge. Of  course  a  man  knows  himself  superficially. 
He  bears  in  memory  the  record  and  attestation  of  his 
normal  quality.  His  past  experience  culminates  in 
a  sense  of  more  or  less  definite  individuality;  he 
knows  in  a  general  way  his  natural  ability,  his 
courage,  and  his  impulses,  and  he  has  reliable  con- 
viction as  to  what  he  is,  and  what  he  would  be  and 
do  in  any  given  contingency.  He  knows,  too,  his 
civil  and  social  responsibility  in  the  state.  And  he 

i  From  Prof.  Ladd's  "Secret  of  Personality":  "The  con- 
ception of  what  it  is  to  be  a  Self,  and  equally  the  conception 
of  my  own  particular  Self,  is  not  a  matter  for  immediate 
Knowledge,  or  for  mental  envisagement,  in  a  single  mental  act. 
It  is  formed  by  intellectual  processes.  .  .  .  The  Knowledge 
which  is  of  Self  differs  from  the  Knowledge  which  sense-per- 
ception brings.  .  .  .  The  sensuous  elements  of  consciousness, 
especially  those  of  the  most  definitely  localized  and  clearly 
projected  sort,  are  relatively  suppressed.  In  predominating 
states  of  self-consciousness,  the  sensations  are  of  the  vague 
unlocalized  order  which  are  attributable  to  myself  as  a  sen- 
tient organism,  rather  than  to  any  objective  thing  ...  by 
the  influence  of  feeling  over  attention  one  often  passes  back 
and  forth  between  the  objective  and  the  subjective  aspects  of 
the  same  experience."  "But  the  sanest  activities  of  the  same 
intellect  compel  it  to  conceive  of  the  Self  as  having  qualities 
that  cannot  be  ascribed  to  any  Thing." 

This  making  a  static  identity  of  a  process,  and  then  passing 
it  back  and  forth  (fully  identified)  between  the  two  factors 
(subject  and  object)  which  compose  it,  is  about  the  most 
pitiable  infatuation  that  any  scholar  has  ever  exemplified. 
And  then  the  smug  composure  of  it  all ! 


128  PLURIVERSE 

may  well  have  had  moments  of  reflection  upon  his 
relations  to  his  inner  as  well  as  to  his  outer  world; 
he  may  have  become  even  a  professor  of  philosophy, 
and  yet  have  never  clearly  discriminated  between  the 
philosophical  requirements  of  an  original  as  dis- 
tinguished from  a  secondary  and  given  principle. 
For  example,  he  may  have  never  contemplated  any 
supposable  difference  between  his  accountability  to 
his  fellow  creatures  and  his  standing  before  his 
Creator,  as  the  source  of  his  sustenance  and  inspira- 
tion. In  a  word,  he  may  have  never  been  concerned 
in  fundamental  explanation.  Against  Prof.  Ladd's 
naive  and  over-confident  dictum,  let  us  cite  the  good- 
natured  comment  of  Hume : 

"There  are  some  philosophers  who  imagine  we  are 
every  moment  intimately  conscious  of  what  we  call 
our  'self.'  For  my  part,  when  I  enter  most  inti- 
mately into  what  I  call  myself,  I  always  stumble 
upon  some  particular  perception,  heat  or  cold,  light 
or  shade,  love  or  hatred,  pain  or  pleasure.  I  never 
catch  myself  at  any  time  without  a  perception,  and 
never  can  observe  anything  but  the  perception." 

Said  Plotinus:  "We  feel  distinctly  only  what  is 
alien,  not  ourselves,  not  our  own  inmost  being.  It 
is  impossible  that  consciousness  should  be  the  essence 
of  the  inner  life  and  the  source  of  truth;  the  foun- 
tain-head must  be  a  world  behind  consciousness. 

"In  order  to  seek  for  reason  we  must  already  pos- 
sess reason."  In  a  word,  The  Hound  of  Heaven  is 
on  his  own  trail  and  what  he  seeks  is  nothing  else 
than  a  foregone  conclusion.  .  .  . 

The  acute  discrimination  of  Kant  invites  special 
attention:  "Reason  imposes  upon  us  an  apparent 


SELF-RELATION  129 

knowledge  only,  by  representing  the  constant  logi- 
cal subject  of  thought  as  the  knowledge  of  the  real 
subject  in  which  that  knowledge  inheres.  Of  that 
subject,  however,  we  have  not  and  cannot  have  the 
slightest  knowledge." 

"In  what  we  call  soul  there  is  a  continuous  flux, 
and  nothing  permanent,  except  it  may  be  (if  people 
will  have  it  so)  the  simple  I,  so  simple  because  this 
representation  has  no  contents.  .  .  .  But  this  I  is 
neither  an  intuition  nor  a  concept  of  any  object." 

"The  reason  why  that  being  which  thinks  within 
us  imagines  that  it  knows  itself  by  means  of  pure 
categories,  and  especially  by  that  which  expresses 
absolute  unity  under  each  head,  is  ...  it  does  not 
know  itself  through  the  categories,  but  knows  the 
categories  only.  It  appears  self-evidently  that  I 
cannot  know  as  an  object  that  which  is  presupposed 
in  order  to  enable  me  to  know  an  object,  and  that 
the  determining  self  (thought)  differs  from  the  self 
that  is  to  be  determined,  as  knowledge  from  its  ob- 
ject. Nevertheless  nothing  is  more  natural,  or  at 
least  more  tempting,  than  the  illusion  which  makes 
us  look  upon  the  unity  in  the  synthesis  of  thoughts 
as  a  perceived  unity  in  the  subject  of  the  thoughts. 
One  might  call  it  the  surreptitious  admission  of  a 
hypostatized  consciousness." 

"What  I  maintain  is,  that  all  the  difficulties  which 
we  imagine  to  exist  in  these  questions,  and  with 
which,  as  dogmatical  objections,  people  wish  to  give 
themselves  an  air  of  deeper  insight  than  the  common 
understanding  can  claim,  rests  on  a  mere  illusion, 
which  leads  us  to  hypostatize  what  exists  in  thought 
only  as  a  real  object  outside  the  thinking  subject." 


130  PLURIVERSE 

(The  reader  should  forecast  from  this  notion  of 
hypostatizing  a  thing  outside  itself  —  like  Fichte's 
"being  out  of  its  being"  —  the  struggles  for  causa 
sui,  and  the  Heraclitic  and  Hegelian  claims  of  some- 
thing from  nothing,  the  inevitable,  etc.) 

"Such  a  concept  is  necessary  for  practical  pur- 
poses, and  sufficient,  but  we  can  never  pride  our- 
selves on  it  as  helping  to  expand  our  knowledge  of 
ourself  by  means  of  pure  reason.  .  .  that  concept 
is  only  constantly  turning  around  itself  in  a  circle, 
and  does  not  help  us  with  respect  to  any  question 
which  aims  at  synthetical  knowledge." 

"I  put  my  concept  and  its  unity  in  the  place  of 
the  qualities  that  belong  to  me  as  an  object,  and 
thus  really  take  for  granted  what  was  wished  to  be 
known." 

"The  internal  sense  by  means  of  which  the  mind 
perceives  itself  or  its  internal  state  does  not  give  an 
intuition  of  the  soul  itself,  as  an  object."  "Besides 
this  logical  meaning  of  the  'I'  we  have  no  knowledge 
of  the  subject  in  itself,  which  forms  the  substratum 
and  foundation  of  it  (consciousness)  and  of  all  our 
thoughts  ...  it  signifies  a  substance  in  idea  only, 
and  not  in  reality." 

"The  subjective  I  can  never  be  divided  and  distrib- 
uted ;  and  it  is  this  I  which  we  presuppose  in  every 
thought." 

"Although  the  whole  of  a  thought  may  be  divided 
and  distributed  under  many  objects,  the  subjective 
I  can  never  be  divided  and  distributed;  and  it  is 
this  I  which  we  presuppose  in  every  thought  .  .  . 
but  that  concept,  or  that  proposition,  teaches  us 
nothing  at  all  with  reference  to  myself,  as  an  ob- 


SELF-RELATION  131 

ject  of  experience,  because  the  concept  of  substance 
itself  is  used  as  a  function  of  synthesis  only,  without 
any  intuition  to  rest  on,  and  therefore  without  any 
object  —  valid  with  reference  to  the  condition  of  our 
knowledge  but  not  with  reference  to  any  object 
of  it."  " 

By  this  I,  or  he,  or  it  (the-  thing)  which  thinks, 
nothing  is  represented  beyond  a  transcendental  sub- 
ject of  thought  =  x,  which  is  known  only  through 
the  thoughts  (remembered?)  that  are  its  predicates, 
and  of  which,  apart  from  them,  we  can  never*nave 
the  slightest  concept  —  so  that  we  are  really  turn- 
ing round  it  in  a  perpetual  circle,  having  already  to 
use  its  representation,  before  we  can  have  any  judg- 
ment about  it." 

"Though  the  I  exists  in  all  thoughts,  not  the 
slightest  intuition  is  connected  with  that  representa- 
tion by  which  it  might  be  distinguished  from  other 
objects  of  intuition.  .  .,  .  The  internal  sensuous 
intuition  of  our  mind  (as  an  object  of  consciousness) 
which  is  represented  as  determined  by  the  succession 
of  different  states  in  time,  is  not  a  real  self,  as  it 
exists  by  itself,  or  what  is  called  the  transcendental 
subject,  but  a  phenomenon  only,  given  to  the  sens- 
ibility of  this  to  us  unknown  being." 

"The  non-sensuous  cause  of  these  representations 
is  entirely  unknown  to  us,  and  we  can  never  perceive 
it  as  an  object." 

"The  whole  representation  is  nothing  but  the  idea 
of  a  possible  experience." 

Schwegler  subsumes  the  whole  matter  thus:  "In 
the  traditional  psychology  the  soul  was  regarded  as 
a  psychical  thing,  a  simple  substance  —  an  intel- 


132  PLURIVERSE 

lectual,  numerically  identical  substance  with  the  pred- 
icate of  personality.  All  these  statements  are  sub- 
reptitious,  petitiones  principii,  derived  from  the 
simple  'I  think'  which  is  neither  perception  nor  no- 
tion, but  a  mere  consciousness,  an  act  of  the  mind. 
This  act  of  thought  is  falsely  converted  into  a  thing ; 
for  the  existence  of  the  ego  as  subject,  the  existence 
of  the  ego  as  object,  as  soul,  is  substituted.  That  the 
ego  might  be  treated  as  an  object  and  apply  cate- 
gories in  its  regard,  it  would  have  required  to  have 
been  empirically  given  in  a  perception,  which  is  im- 
possible." (No  one  ever  saw  such  a  thing,  or  dreamed 
of  such  an  experience.)  "There  is  no  rational  psy- 
chology which  might  procure  us  an  additional  knowl- 
edge of  ourselves,  but  only  a  discipline  which  sets 
insurmountable  bounds  to  speculative  reason  in  this 
field.  We  may  view  this  discipline,  too,  as  admon- 
ishing us  to  confess  the  refusal  of  reason  perfectly 
to  satisfy  the  curious  in  reference  to  questions  that 
transcend  this  life." 

In  contrast  with  these  clean-cut  sentences,  which 
appeal  to  the  plainest  common  sense,  the  reader  shall 
have  a  specimen  of  the  mental  contortion  which,  as- 
suming that  philosophy  must  of  course  succeed,  has 
exploited  the  opposite  position:  he  shall  see  how 
haltingly  the  explorer  sets  his  feet  upon  the  quaking 
ground.  Observe  first  the  hopeless  entanglement  of 
the  dialectic  in  this  concession  of  the  preface  to 
"The  Secret  of  Hegel": 

"There  is  no  concrete  which  consists  not  of  two 
antagonistic  characters,  where,  at  the  same  time, 
strangely  somehow,  the  one  is  not  only  through  the 
other,  but  actually  is  the  other." 


SELF-RELATION  133 

In  his  last  book,  entitled  "What  Is  Thought?" 
Dr.  Stirling  has  this,  of  self -relation : 

"I  as  I  is  the  subject,  and  Me  as  Me  is  the  object ; 
but  both  are  identically  the  same.  This  is  the 
primitive  relation  —  the  unit  of  what  is,  the  unit  of 
what  it  is  to  think,  and  the  unit  of  what  it  is  to  be." 

To  countenance  this  doctrine  he  quotes  as  follows 
from  his  "Secret  of  Hegel":  (The  reader  may 
safely  skip  the  entire  quotation.) 

"The  idea  is  Thought,  self -identical  Thinking; 
self-identical  because  in  its  own  nature  the  Idea  is 
two-sided  —  an  objective  side  is,  as  it  were,  exposed 
and  offered  to  a  subjective  side,  and  the  result  is 
the  return,  so  to  speak,  of  the  Idea  from  its  other, 
which  is  the  objective  side,  into  its  self  or  subjective 
side,  as  satisfied,  gratified,  and  contented  knowl- 
edge." 

"Cogito  ergo  sum.  That  is,  Thought  is ;  it  has 
come  to  be,  it  simply  is  —  as  yet,  however,  only  in 
itself :  there  is  as  yet  only  blank  self-identity  —  it 
can  only  say  is,  rather  than  am,  of  itself,  or  to  it- 
self." 

"This  is  just  a  description  m  abstracto  of  self- 
consciousness.  The  Ego  is  first  unal  simplicity  — 
that  is  unal  or  simple  negativity;  but  just,  as  it 
were,  for  this  very  reason  (that  is,  to  know  itself  and 
be  no  longer  negative,  or  because  it  finds  itself  in  a 
state  of  negativity)  it  becomes  self-separated  into 
duality  —  it  becomes  a  duplication,  a  duad,  the  units 
of  which  confront  each  other,  in  the  forms  of  Ego- 
subject  and  Ego-object;  and  then,  again,  this  very 
self-separation,  this  very  self-duplication,  becomes  its 
own  negation  —  the  negation  of  the  duality,  inas- 


134  PLURIVERSE 

much  as  its  confronting  units  are  seen  to  be  identical, 
and  the  antithesis  is  reduced,  the  antagonism  vanishes. 
This  process  of  self-consciousness  has  just  to  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  All,  the  Absolute,  the  Substance,  to 
enable  us  to  form  a  conception  of  unal  negativity 
of  Spirit  passing  into  the  alienation  of  external  na- 
ture, finally  to  return  reconciled,  harmonious,  and 
free  into  its  own  self." 

Opposing  this  we  quote  a  few  sentences  from 
Bradley's  "Appearance  and  Reality": 

"It  is  not  only  possible  but  most  probable  that 
in  every  man  there  are  elements  in  the  internal  felt 
core  which  are  never  made  objects,  and  which  prac- 
tically cannot  be."  "Metaphysics  pays  no  regard 
to  the  origin  of  our  ideas."  (In  a  logical  conflict 
you  may  use  vacuums  for  balls.  In  all  efforts  at 
self-knowledge  the  subject  still  is  such,  still  retains 
the  observant  and  superior  side,  and  cannot  for- 
feit it.)  "It  is  not  known,  and  never  as  a  whole  can 
be  known,  in  such  a  sense  that  knowledge  would  be 
the  same  as  experience  or  reality."  "There  can  be 
really  no  such  science  as  a  theory  of  cognition." 
"Every  soul  has  existed  as  a  not-self."  "The  self  is 
one  of  the  results  gained  by  transcending  the  first 
imperfect  form  of  experience."  "A  complete  state 
of  existence  as  a  whole  is  at  any  one  moment  utterly 
impossible." 

"There  is  no  self-consciousness  in  which  the  ob- 
ject is  the  same  as  the  subject,  none  in  which  what 
is  perceived  exhausts  the  whole  self.  In  self-con- 
sciousness a  part  or  element,  or  again  a  general 
aspect  or  character,  becomes  distinct  from  the  whole 
mass,  and  stands  over  against  the  felt  background. 


SELF-RELATION  135 

But  the  background  is  never  exhausted  by  this  ob- 
ject, and  it  never  could  be  so.  An  experiment  should 
convince  any  man  that  in  self-consciousness  what  he 
feels  cannot  wholly  come  before  him.  It  can  be 
exhausted,  if  at  all,  only  by  a  long  series  of  observa- 
tions; and  the  summed  result  of  these  observations 
cannot  be  experienced  as  a  fact.  Such  a  result 
cannot  be  verified  as  quite  true  at  any  particular 
given  moment.  ...  If  self-consciousness  is  ap- 
pealed to,  it  is  evident  that  at  any  moment  I  am  more 
than  the  self  which  I  can  think  of.  ...  In  think- 
ing, the  subject  that  thinks  is  more  than  thought." 
"In  practice,  thought  always  is  found  with,  and  ap- 
pears to  demand,  an  Other."  "The  emotion  we 
attend  to  is,  taken  strictly,  never  precisely  the 
same  as  the  emotion  which  we  feel  ...  it  has  be- 
come a  factor  in  a  new  felt  totality.  .  .  .  Our 
experience  is  always  from  time  to  time  a  unity  which, 
as  such,  is  destroyed  in  becoming  an  object.  .  .  . 
The  Other  which  it  asserts  is  found  on  inquiry  to 
be  no  other.  .  .  .  If  I  attempt  to  elaborate  this 
point  I  should  perhaps  obscure  it." 

"Truth  made  adequate  to  reality  would  have  be- 
come something  else,  for  us  unattainable."  (A  rela- 
tion must  have  terms,  which  it  relates,  or  connects, 
as  by  a  line  between  them.  What  are  the  terms  of 
a  self-relation?  If  a  thing  knows  itself  it  is  known 
by  itself;  the  terms  are  identical,  or  else  doubled  in 
defiance  of  the  unity  assumed.) 

"To  say  of  any  temporal  process  whatever  that 
it  is  in  the  end  self-intelligible,  is,  so  far  as  I  can 
perceive,  a  mistake.  There  is  a  difference  unremoved 
between  the  subject  and  the  predicate  which  shows  a 


136  PLURIVERSE 

failure  in  thought"  (surd?)  "but  which,  if  removed, 
would  wholly  destroy  the  special  essence  of  think- 
ing." "There  is  no  idea  which  as  such  contains  its 
own  existence."  "A  relation  which  can  get  on  some- 
how without  (different)  terms,  and  with  no  difference 
beyond  the  mere  ends  of  a  line  of  connection,  is 
really  a  phrase  without  meaning."  "Self-relation 
has  a  double  character  as  both  supporting  and 
being  made  by  the  relation.  It  is  a  false  abstrac- 
tion, a  thing  that  loudly  contradicts  itself." 
"Without  entering  into  psychological  refinements 
and  difficulties  we  may  be  sure  of  this  main  result: 
The  actual  subject  is  never,  in  any  state  of  mind, 
brought  before  itself  as  an  object.  .  .  .  The  ac- 
tual subject  never  feels  that  it  is  out  there  in  its 
object,  that  there  is  nothing  more  left  within,  and 
that  the  difference  has  disappeared." 

"I  stand  on  this:  Present  your  doctrine  (what- 
ever it  is)  in  a  form  which  will  bear  criticism,  and 
enable  me  to  understand  this  confused  mass  of  facts ; 
do  this  and  I  will  follow  you,  and  I  will  worship  the 
source  of  such  a  true  revelation;  but  I  will  not  ac- 
cept nonsense  for  reality  though  it  be  vouched  for 
by  a  miracle,  or  proceed  from  the  mouth  of  a  psy- 
chological monster." 

Late  as  it  is,  I  muse  that  the  consciousness  of 
Hegel  has  never  been  reflected;  at  least  I  have  not 
recognized  it  in  literature.  As  not  only  a  teacher 
but  the  highest  authority  in  a  quasi  State-phil- 
osophy, it  was  not  his  cue  to  emphasize  the  Socratic 
concession,  "We  do  not  know";  the  right  German 
retort  would  have  relegated  the  whole  profession  to 


SELF-RELATION  137 

innocuous  desuetude,  since  one  man's  ignorance  can 
hardly  be  more  relevant  than  another's.  But  the 
problem  is  ever  pressing,  and  by  dexterously  alter- 
nating the  static  and  dynamic  viewpoints  —  one  the 
eleatic  Sufficient  Intelligence,  in  which  all  things 
always  are,  and  the  other  the  process  and  novelty 
of  Nature,  which  it  were  suicidal  to  deny  —  he  knew 
that  only  a  superhuman  detective  could  impeach  his 
profession.  The  philosophical  position  is  unique. 
Let  one  boldly  declare,  and  who  shall  ask  him  to 
explain?  or  to  explain  what?  for,  this  is  the  problem 
of  the  world:  to  know  by  self-relation  the  nature  of 
knowledge  itself  —  the  curiosity  that  would  turn 
upon  and  envisage  itself  (which  "of  itself  can  do 
nothing"). 

Well  assured  of  the  futility  of  Fichte's  endeavor 
to  embrace  ego  and  non-ego  in  an  immediate  self- 
related  unit,  and  for  his  own  part  so  far  compromis- 
ing the  regime  of  self -knowing  as  to  assume  the  man 
gradually  analysing  his  composite  faculties  one  at 
a  time  (still  postponing  the  real  problem  to  a  last 
with  which  "futurity  could  never  confront  him),  he 
determined  the  Absolute  as  the  process  of  the  in- 
itself  to  for-itself,  and  disingenuously  allowed  the 
practical  process  of  Nature  to  countenance  a  mere- 
tricious violence  to  logical  pure  reason. 

But  this  was  only  one  of  the  "moments"  of  his 
strenuous  and  prodigious  versatility,  which  doubt- 
less realized  the  utmost  agonism  of  mortal  specula- 
tion. Thought  long  ago  transcended  the  dilemma, 
"to  be  or  not  to  be,"  and  proffered  the  duplexity  of 
being  and  not-being  at  once  —  not  consecutively,  but 
jointly  and  essentially.  If  there  is  no  self-relation 


138  PLURIVERSE 

of  Something,  the  key  to  sufficiency  is  either  nowhere 
or  else  in  Nothing  as  logically  construed. 

As  another  instance  of  the  delusive  presumption 
of  self-relation  I  will  recall  an  elaborate  attempt  of 
Stephen  Pearl  Andrews  to  reorganize  philosophy 
under  the  ambitious  title  of  "Universology"  —  a  book 
of  764  pages,  published  by  Dion  Thomas  (New 
York,  1872). 

I  shall  not  offer  any  sketch  of  his  endeavor,  except 
as  explaining  that  he  subsumed  all  explanation  un- 
der the  three  categories,  Unism,  Duism,  and  Trinism. 
It  will  serve  our  immediate  purpose  to  indicate  the 
necessity  that,  as  a  universologist,  he  had  to  assume 
a  transcendental  viewpoint  — i.  e.  to  oversee  the 
universe;  so  that  he  naturally  fell  into  the  method 
of  assuming  a  "wholeness  aspect"  and  a  "partness 
aspect"  of  being.  Taking  occasion  to  remind  him 
that  an  aspect  presupposed  an  observer,  I  addressed 
to  him  the  unsophisticated  but  surely  pertinent  ques- 
tion, "To  whom  is  the  wholeness  aspect  of  being?" 
He  answered: 

"Your  question  seems  to  read:  'To  whom  is  "the 
wholeness  aspect  of  being" '? 

"I  confess  that  your  question  is  as  blind  to  me  as 
Trinism,  or  all  beyond  Unism  and  Duism,  is  to  you. 
The  wholeness  aspect  of  being  is  the  antithet  or 
counterpart  of  the  partness  aspect,  of  the  same  be- 
ing, of  whatsoever  being,  and  to  any  beholder  or 
contemplator.  It  is  the  Unism  contrasted  with  the 
Duism  —  the  two  combined  being  the  Trinism. 
But  there  is  no  good  in  letter-writing.  Come  and 
see  me  and  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it.  N.  E.  corner 


SELF-RELATION  139 

54th  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,  up  two  flights  —  a 
houseful  of  splendid  fellows,  male  and  female,  the 
incipient  Pantarchy." 

To  sum  up :  Starting  from  the  naive  position  that 
the  being  that  knows,  in  what  is  called  "self -con- 
sciousness," is  the  same  being  that  is  known  (».  e. 
that  the  subject  and  the  object,  by  whatever  au- 
thority separately  named,  are  instantly  and  iden- 
tically one  —  miraculously,  as  held  by  Fichte,  with- 
out help  or  compromise  from  the  "process"  of  Hegel, 
wherein  the  in-itself  becomes  for-itself  by  being 
taken  up  piecemeal,  and  so  avoiding  the  charge  of 
absolute  and  immediate  self-relation),  we  have  la- 
boriously arrayed  Against  that  merely  popular  and 
psychological  notion  the  profounder  insights  of 
Plato,  Jesus,  Swedenborg,  Plotinus,  Berkeley,  Hume, 
Kant,  Schwegler,  Jowett,  Bradley,  Hodgson,  Emer- 
son, and  Eucken. 

At  the  same  time  we  have  had  to  endure  the  weak 
defection  of  Kant,  in  view  of  his  orthodox  popular- 
ity, by  assuming  as  a  categorical  imperative  the 
uncultured  consciousness  of  "the  plain  man,"  so 
stultifying  all  his  metaphysical  excellence  and  in- 
dustry. 

It  behooves  us  to  see  more  clearly  the  proper  use 
and  philosophical  importance  of  the  doctrine  for  or 
against  the  claim  of  self-relation.  Is  the  want  of  it 
fatal  to  philosophy?  With  this  granted  would  the 
problem  be  solved?  Many  presumptive  experts  have 
claimed  in  the  notion  of  Hegel  the  plausibility  of 
self-relation  by  the  process  of  in-itself  to  for-itself 
as  "finally"  self-knowledge.  Notwithstanding  all 
the  admonitions  that  self-knowledge  is  but  a  whim 


140  PLURIVERSE 

of  words,  is  but  a  transcendental  concept  which  no 
perception  ever  corroborated ;  that  no  man  ever  saw 
a  self  or  a  soul;  that  the  subject  would  forfeit  its 
whole  supremacy  in  becoming  an  object  and  cease 
being  a  subject  at  all;  that  the  gun  cannot  shoot 
into  its  own  muzzle;  that  "truth"  is  precisely  what 
every  representation  or  pretence  of  knowledge  with- 
out identity  must  lack,  etc.  and  etc.  —  the  claim 
still  seems  to  hold  that  in  a  man's  taking  himself 
or  his  faculties  up  piecemeal,  or  by  degrees,  he 
should  exhaust  his  entire  contents,  and  leave  no 
such  wonderful  "secret"  undiscovered.  For  ex- 
ample, he  would  visualize  his  courage,  or  his 
conscience,  or  his  memory.  None  of  these,  as  ab- 
stracted from  his  subjective  totality  and  made  an 
object,  should  very  seriously  cripple  his  critical 
judgment,  so  what  recondite  element  of  his  "self" 
should  escape  the  inventory?  Have  you  not  seen 
"the  nation"  if  you  have  seen  all  the  people?  do  not 
the  parts  comprise  the  entire  contents  of  a  whole? 
What  is  the  crux,  the  mystery,  which  our  long 
catalogue  of  authorities  grudges  to  the  claim  of 
"self -relation"?  Or,  allowing  the  claim,  as  it  is 
endorsed  by  the  popular  psychology,  does  philoso- 
phy succeed  as  explanation?  In  brief,  why  do  we 
cite  these  authorities  against  the  very  natural 
notion  that  personality  explains,  and  that  the  world 
in  itself  becomes  rational  in  and  only  in  the  presence 
of  God?  The  grudge  of  science  as  against  the  pre- 
tence of  self-relation  is  that  our  highest  claim  and 
achievement  namely,  knowledge,  is  therein  made  to 
countenance  with  its  full  authority  and  significance 
a  claim  to  have  attained  the  comprehension  and 


SELF-RELATION  141 

mastery  of  that  which  halts  our  curiosity,  controls 
our  interest,  and  occasions  our  discontent,  while  in 
fact  it  does  not  fundamentally  understand  the  least 
and  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  Our  consciousness, 
even  as  it  glows,  is  a  helpless  projection  from  an 
alien  energy,  bottomless  in  its  own  regard,  utterly 
unqualified  to  declare  or  to  determine  anything  as 
necessary,  and  therefore  wholly  incompetent  to  radi- 
cal explanation. 

It  is  its  insult  to  rational  principle  and  real  power 
that  condemns  self-relation,  for  those  who  question 
reality  as  dependent  upon  conventional  terms.  And 
as  mere  self-knowledge  it  is  still  hopeless  of  being 
and  of  power,  all-requisite  to  the  pose  of  the  uni- 
versal —  the  Supreme. 

Supplementary  Note  on  the  "Speculative 
Philosophy"  of  W.  T.  Harris. 

Speculative  knowledge,  or  knowing,  is  for  its  pro- 
fessors a  grade  beyond  the  transcendental,  and 
would  be  inadmissible  by  Kant,  as  being  what  he 
would  call  transcendent,  or  beyond  the  mental  pur- 
view —  in  fact  out  of  the  world.  Transcendental- 
ism uses  the  pure  forms  of  the  mind,  indifferent  as 
to  their  contents  (*.  e.  it  is  concerned  with  pure 
thinking,  regardless  of  what  it  is  about)  ;  and  to 
pure  formality  only  contradiction  can  be  fatal. 
Although  the  topic  of  its  thought  has  no  element  of 
perceptual  experience,  and  is  of  concepts  wholly, 
the  transcendental  must  still  have  consistent  forms, 
capable  of  logical  expression.  Borne  on  the  current 
of  pure  logic,  it  may  think  what  it  shall  not  really 


142  PLURIVERSE 

know,  as  lacking  the  perceptual  and  corroborating 
ground  of  experience. 

(I  have  before  instanced  the  converse  of  this  last 
position,  in  the  fact  that  we  may  know  what  we 
cannot  think  —  as  appears  in  the  failure  of  math- 
ematics to  articulate  in  its  digits  the  side  of  the 
double  square,  or  of  -v/2  or  -y/8-) 

But  the  speculative  will  not  be  withheld  from  truth 
by  the  impossibility  of  its  appearance  in  either  imag- 
inable or  logically  conceptual  form,  nor  will  it 
allow  truth  to  be  discredited  by  its  practically  neces- 
sary appearance  in  the  form  of  contradiction.  Its 
claim  is  to  "the  unpicturable  notions  of  intelligence" ; 
and  these  notions  are  not  amenable  to  immediate 
or  direct  knowing,  but  are  to  be  achieved  by  method 
and  system,  in  a  mediate  or  roundabout  process, 
which  must  defer  the  student's  conclusion  until  he 
has  learned  to  think  properly. 

And  this  delay  is  in  any  event  advisable ;  for  there 
are  various  cases  in  which  immediate  conclusion  and 
forthright  expression  may  result  in  utter  confu- 
sion. Truth  is  largely  amenable  to  its  viewpoint; 
and  there  appear  various  overt  contradictions  in 
the  countenance  of  half-truths  used  as  whole  ones, 
affording  expression  in  contradictions  which  neces- 
sitate no  antagonism  in  reality. 

Two  observers,  of  but  partial  experience,  may 
truthfully  declare,  one  that  a  given  shield  is  con- 
cave, the  other  that  it  is  convex;  the  result,  as  a 
matter  of  evidence,  can  be  assured  only  methodically, 
by  a  duodiction,  or  a  uniting  of  the  two  assertions. 
An  honest  man  may  swear  that  the  sun  goes  around 
the  earth;  an  astronomer  may  swear,  by  the  light 


SELF-RELATION  143 

of  his  science,  that  the  earth  goes  around  the  sun; 
the  truth  of  the  matter,  if  it  is  a  single  or  toto- 
truth,  is  determinable  only  upon  considerations  which 
neither  of  the  two  witnesses  can  have  ever  exploited 
—  to  wit,  whether  the  "universe"  is  one  or  many,  or 
both,  or  neither.  And  the  two  assertions,  although 
different,  are  not  contradictory.  Neither  says  that 
the  other  is  not  true. 

From  the  speculative  viewpoint  the  ultimate  truth 
is  a  methodical  deduction,  to  be  entertained  only 
under  a  trained  and  scientific  vision,  which  can  con- 
clude esoterically  in  spite  of,  and  without  the  assist- 
ance of  either  language  or  imagination,  both  of 
which,  though  necessarily  to  be  used  in  declaring 
the  speculative  insight,  are  used  under  protest,  as 
handicapping  the  true  meaning.  At  least  its  advo- 
cates will  not  balk  at  the  assertion  that  all  reality  is 
the  cause  of  itself. 

The  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  edited  and 
published  by  William  T.  Harris,  superintendent  of 
the  schools  of  St.  Louis,  first  appeared  in  1867,  and 
continued  quarterly  until  1899,  when  Mr.  Harris 
was  appointed  by  President  McKinley  as  U.  S.  Com- 
missioner of  Education.  The  initial  and  constant 
inspiration  of  the  magazine  was  "causa  sui"  or  self- 
determination,  as  the  philosophical  first  principle  of 
thought  and  being,  and  the  only  fundamental  basis 
of  explanation.  With  the  first  number  the  editor 
began  an  elaborate  "Introduction  to  Philosophy," 
which  was  rather,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  an  intro- 
duction to  the  reader  of  what  philosophy  the  author 
knew.  All  such  introductions  are  but  reveries  as  to 
what  the  problem  really  is  —  or  how  to  state  it. 


144  PLURIVERSE 

Tliis  "Introduction's"  chief  appeal  to  the  reader 
was  the  alleged  inconsequence  of  objective  or  his- 
torical cause  as  preceding  effect  —  a  first  cause  as 
originating  all  effects  in  a  succession  of  dependent 
beings  —  while  no  dependent  being  could  have  any 
causality  to  spare  —  whence  first  cause  (whether 
first  in  history  or  in  the  order  of  reason)  must  be 
independent,  having  all  causality  in,  for  and  of  it- 
self. 

This  very  cheap  and  very  peremptory  assertion 
seems  to  ignore  the  cloture  imminent  in  the  previous 
question,  whether  there  is  or  must  be  any  cause  at 
all  —  or  who  shall  determine  the  sufficiency  of  any- 
thing alleged  as  a  cause  —  and  whether  in  fact  a 
cause  is  objective  or  subjective.  One  does  not  need 
much  logic  to  perceive  that  even  the  admission  of  the 
claim  (that  self-cause  is  the  only  possible  cause) 
gives  cause  no  standing  as  yet  in  any  court. 

Now  Doctor  Harris  knew  as  well  as  any  other 
man  (and  far  better  than  most  men)  the  logical 
impossibility  of  self-relation  as  we  have  sufficiently 
exposed  it ;  but  encouraged  by  the  vulgar  psychology 
of  "self-consciousness,"  and  by  the  propriety  of  cer- 
tain systematic  conclusions  which  outface  immediate 
knowledge  although  handicapped  by  contradiction, 
he  called  in  the  assistance  of  an  inadvertent  remark 
of  Kant  that  space  is  "an  infinite  quantity"  — 
whence,  since  quantity  founds  upon  quality,  space 
could  be  regarded  as  objective.  And  now,  before 
citing  the  use  that  Prof.  Harris  made  of  this  inadver- 
tence of  Kant,  it  is  highly  important  that  we  have  a 
correct  definition  of  space,  even  as  Kant  himself 
more  carefully  defined  it. 


SELF-RELATION  145 

Space  is  purely  ideal  —  that  is  to  say,  vernacu- 
larfy,  it  is  nothing  save  as  it  is  made  a  topic  by 
thinking  of  it.  Space  is  a  contemplation,  a  sub- 
jective concession  or  informal  judgment,  implying 
absolute  freedom,  room  or  opportunity  for  any  men- 
tal project  of  either  adventure  or  conjecture  —  t.  e. 
there  is  in  space  no  hindrance  or  objection  to  any 
proposition.  Space  does  not  in  itself  imply  exten- 
sity,  but  means  liberty  to  extend. 

Space  taken  objectively,  as  a  quantity,  would  in- 
fer a  field  of  thought  which  its  proprietor  might 
sublet  by  the  yard  or  the  acre,  and  guarantee  it 
from  trespass  or  interference  —  there  being  just  so 
much  of  it  on  record  and  no  more.  On  the  contrary 
the  occupancy  of  space  is  infinitely  heterogeneous 
and  doubled  up.  Taken  as  mere  extension,  there  is 
double  space  here  in  the  street,  where  the  mirror  on 
the  wall  shows  my  room  projected  several  feet  over 
the  pavement,  including  color  and  form  as  real  as 
such  can  be.  In  the  room  itself  are  heat  and  light 
in  the  same  space ;  there  is  appreciation  and  specu- 
lation, and  there  is  certainly  room  for  improvement. 

Kant's  scientific  definition  of  space  is  as  follows : 

"Space,  as  prior  to  all  things  which  determine  it 
(fill  or  limit  it)  is  nothing  but  the  mere  possibility 
of  external  phenomena,  so  far  as  they  exist  already, 
or  can  be  added  to  phenomena  given." 

This  argues  something  very  different  from  "an 
infinite  quantity." 

Now  returning  to  Harris's  different  kinds  of 
knowing,  the  reader  may  grudge  the  space  required 
here,  but  he  should  know  the  quality  of  what  for 
twenty  years  passed  as  the  best  thought  of  America, 


146  PLURIVERSE 

and  was  carefully  reflected  in  various  European 
publications. 

[From  Harris's  "Introduction  to  Philosophy":] 

"It  is  a  mistake,  to  attempt  to  introduce  the  be- 
ginner of  philosophy  at  once  into  the  dialectic. 
The  content  of  philosophy  must  be  first  presented 
under  its  sensuous  and  reflective  forms,  and  a  grad- 
ual progress  established.  In  this  chapter  an  at- 
tempt will  be  made  to  approach  again  the  ultimate 
principle  which  we  have  hitherto  fixed  only  in  a 
general  manner  as  Mind.  We  will  use  the  method  of 
external  reflection,  and  demonstrate  three  proposi- 
tions: 1.  There  is  an  independent  being;  2.  That 
being  is  self-determined ;  3.  Self-determined  being  is 
in  the  form  of  personality,  t.  e.  is  an  ego. 

"1.  —  a.  Dependent  being,  implying  its  comple- 
ment upon  which  it  depends,  cannot  be  explained 
through  itself,  but  through  that  upon  which  it  de- 
pends. 

"b.  This  being  upon  which  it  depends  cannot  be 
also  a  dependent  being,  for  the  dependent  being  has 
no  support  of  its  own  to  lend  to  another ;  all  that  it 
has  is  borrowed.  A  chain  of  dependent  beings  col- 
lapses into  one  dependent  being.  Dependence  is 
not  converted  into  independence  by  mere  multipli- 
cation. 

"c.  The  dependent,  therefore,  depends  upon  the 
independent  and  has  its  explanation  in  it.  Since  all 
being  is  of  one  kind  or  the  other,  it  follows  that  all 
being  is  independent,  or  a  complemental  element  of 
it.  Reciprocal  dependence  makes  an  independent 
including  whole,  which  is  the  negative  unity. 

"Definition.  —  One  of  the  most  important  imple- 


SELF-RELATION  147 

ments  of  the  thinker  is  the  comprehension  of  "nega- 
tive unity."  It  is  a  unity  resulting  from  the 
reciprocal  cancelling  of  elements;  e.  g.,  salt  is  the 
negative  unity  of  acid  and  alkali.  It  is  called  nega- 
tive because  it  negates  the  independence  of  the  ele- 
ments within  it.  In  the  negative  unity  water,  the 
elements  oxygen  and  hydrogen  have  their  indepen- 
dence negated. 

"2  —  a.  The  independent  being  cannot  exist  with- 
out determinations.  Without  these,  it  could  not  dis- 
tinguish itself  or  be  distinguished  from  nought. 

"fe.  Nor  can  the  independent  being  be  determined 
(i.  e.  limited  or  modified  in  any  way)  from  without, 
or  through  another.  For  all  that  is  determined 
through  another  is  a  dependent  somewhat. 

"c.  Hence  the  independent  being  can  be  only  a 
self-determined.  If  self-determined,  it  can  exist 
through  itself. 

"3.  —  a.  Self-determination  implies  that  the  con- 
stitution or  nature  be  self-originated.  There  is 
nothing  about  a  self-determined  that  is  created  by 
anything  without. 

"6.  Thus  self-determined  being  exists  dually  —  it 
is  (a)  as  determining,  and  (6)  as  determined,  (a) 
As  determining,  it  is  the  active,  which  contains 
merely  the  possibility  of  determinations;  (6)  as  de- 
termined, it  is  the  passive  result  —  the  matter  upon 
which  the  subject  acts. 

"c.  But  since  both  are  the  same  being,  each  side 
returns  into  itself:  (a)  as  determining  or  active,  it 
acts  only  upon  its  own  determining,  and  (6)  as  pas- 
sive or  determined,  it  is,  as  result  of  the  former,  the 
selfsame  active  itself.  Hence  its  movement  is  a 


148  PLURIVERSE 

movement  of  self-recognition  —  a  posting  of  distinc- 
tipn  which  is  cancelled  in  the  same  act.  (In  self- 
recognition  something  is  made  an  object,  and  identi- 
fied with  the  subject  in  the  same  act.)  Moreover, 
the  determiner,  on  account  of  its  pure  generality 
(t.  e.  its  having  no  concrete  determinations  as  yet), 
can  only  be  ideal  —  can  only  exist  as  the  ego  exists. 
in  thought ;  not  as  a  thing,  but  as  a  generic  entity. 
.The  passive  side  can  exist  only  as  the  self  exists  in 
consciousness  —  as  that  which  is  in  opposition  and 
yet  in  identity  at  the  same  time.  No  finite  existence 
could  endure  this  contradiction,  for  all  such  must 
possess  a  nature  or  constitution  which  is  self-deter- 
mined ;  if  not,  each  finite  could  negate  all  its  proper- 
ties and  qualities,  and  yet  remain  itself  —  just  as  the 
person  does  when  he  makes  abstraction  of  all,  in 
thinking  of  the  ego  or  pure  self. 

"Thus  we  find  again  our  former  conclusion:  — 
All  finite  or  dependent  things  must  originate  in  and 
depend  upon  independent  or  absolute  being,  which 
must  be  an  ego.  The  ego  has  the  form  of  infinitude 
(see  Chap.  2  —  "The  Infinite  is  its  own  Other"). 

"We  hope  to  see  those  necessities  of  thought  which 
underlie  all  philosophical  systems. 

"Many  of  the  'impossibilities'  of  thought  are 
easily  shown  to  rest  upon  ignorance  of  psychological 
appliances.  The  person  is  not  able  because  he  does 
not  know  how  —  just  as  in  other  things.  We  must 
take  care  that  we  do  not  confound  the  incapacity  of 
ignorance  with  the  necessity  of  thought. 

"Among  the  first  distinctions  to  be  learned  by  the 
student  in  philosophy  is  that  between  the  imaginative 
form  of  thinking  and  pure  thinking.  The  former  is 


SELF-RELATION  149 

a  sensuous  grade  of  thinking  which  uses  images, 
while  the  latter  is  a  more  developed  stage,  and  is 
able  to  think  objects  in  and  for  themselves  (i.  e.,  as 
'unpicturable') . 

"At  first  one  might  suppose  that  when  finite  things 
are  the  subject  of  thought,  it  would  make  little  dif- 
ference whether  the  first  or  second  form  of  thinking 
is  employed.  This  is,  however,  a  great  error.  The 
Philosopher  must  always  'think  things  under  the 
form  of  eternity'  if  he  would  think  the  truth. 

"Imagination  pictures  objects.  It  represents  to 
itself  only  the  bounded.  If  it  tries  to  realize  the 
conception  of  infinitude,  it  represents  a  limited  some- 
what, and  then  Reflection  or  the  Understanding  (a 
form  of  thought  lying  between  Imagination  and 
Reason)  passes  beyond  the  limits  and  annuls  them. 
This  process  may  be  continued  indefinitely,  or  until 
Reason  (or  pure  thinking)  comes  in  and  solves  the 
dilemma.  Thus  we  have  a  dialogue  resultant  some- 
what as  follows : 

"Imagination:  Come  and  see  the  Infinite,  just  as 
I  have  pictured  it. 

"Understanding  (peeping  cautiously  about  it) : 
Where  is  your  frame?  Ah!  I  see  it  now  clearly. 
How  is  this?  Your  frame  does  not  include  all. 
There  is  a  'beyond'  to  your  picture.  I  cannot  tell 
whether  you  intend  the  inside  or  outside  for  your 
picture  of  the  Infinite ;  I  see  it  on  both. 

"Imagination  (tries  to  extend  the  frame,  but  with 
the  same  result  as  before)  :  I  believe  you  are  right. 
I  am  well  nigh  exhausted  by  my  efforts  to  include 
the  unlimited. 

"Understanding:     Ah!    you    see,    the    Infinite   is 


150  PLURIVERSE 

merely  the  negative  of  the  finite  or  positive.  It  is 
the  negative  of  those  conditions  which  you  place 
there  in  order  to  have  any  representation  at  all. 

"While  Understanding  proceeds  to  deliver  a  course 
of  wise  saws  and  moral  reflections  on  the  inability 
of  the  Finite  to  grasp  the  Infinite,  sitting  apart  upon 
its  bipod  —  for  tripod  it  has  none,  one  of  the  legs 
being  broken  —  it  self-complacently  and  oracularly 
admonishes  the  human  mind  to  cultivate  humility. 
Imagination  drops  her  brush  and  pencil  in  confusion 
at  these  words.  Very  opportunely  Reason  steps  in 
and  takes  an  impartial  survey  of  the  scene.) 

"Reason:  Did  you  say  that  the  Infinite  is  un- 
knowable? 

"Understanding:  Yes.  To  think  is  to  limit,  and 
hence  to  think  the  Infinite  is  to  limit  it,  and  thus  to 
destroy  it. 

"Reason:  Apply  your  remarks  to  space.  Is  not 
space  infinite? 

"Understanding:  If  I  attempt  to  realize  space  I 
conceive  a  bounded,  but  I  at  once  perceive  that  I 
have  placed  my  limits  within  Space,  and  hence  my 
realization  is  inadequate.  The  Infinite,  therefore, 
seems  to  be  a  beyond  to  my  clear  conception. 

"Reason:  Indeed!  When  you  reflect  on  Space, 
do  you  not  perceive  that  it  is  of  such  a  nature  that 
it  can  be  limited  only  ~by  itself  Do  not  all  its  limits 
imply  Space  to  exist  in? 

"Understanding:  Yes,  that  is  the  difficulty. 

"Reason:  I  do  not  see  the  'difficulty.'  If  Space 
can  be  limited  only  by  itself,  its  limit  continues  it 
instead  of  bounding  it.  Hence  it  is  universally  con- 
tinuous or  infinite. 


SELF-RELATION  151 

"Understanding:     But  a  mere  negative. 

"Reason :  No,  not  a  mere  negative,  but  the  nega- 
tive of  all  negation,  and  hence  truly  affirmative.  It 
is  the  exhibition  of  the  utter  impossibility  of  any 
negative  to  it.  All  attempts  to  limit  it,  continue 
it.  It  is  its  own  other.  Its  negative  is  itself. 
Here,  then,  we  have  a  truly  affirmative  infinite  in 
contradistinction  to  the  negative  infinite  —  the  'infi- 
nite progress'  that  you  and  Imagination  were  en- 
gaged upon  when  I  came  in. 

"Understanding:  What  you  say  seems  to  me  a 
distinction  in  words  merely. 

"Reason:  Doubtless.  All  distinctions  are  merely 
in  words  until  one  has  learned  to  see  them  independ- 
ent of  words.  But  you  must  go  and  mend  that 
bipod  on  which  you  are  sitting;  for  how  can  one 
think  at  ease  and  exhaustively,  when  he  is  all  the 
time  propping  up  his  basis  from  without? 

"Understanding :  I  cannot  understand  you. 
(Exit.)  " 

I  think  that  the  reader  who  has  gone  over  our 
previous  ground  may  be  trusted  to  sympathize 
with  poor  "Understanding,"  who  plays  the  role  of 
common-sense  in  the  above  colloquy.  He  should 
detect  both  the  misuse  of  the  notion  of  objective 
space  as  a  quantity,  and  the  distortion  of  the  nega- 
tive into  a  positive  quality  in  a  merely  logical  field. 

How  can  space,  in  the  mere  fact  of  its  being  con- 
tinuous, be  held  as  "limiting  itself"  because,  for- 
sooth, it  can  have  no  other  limit?  How  does  the 
word  limit  get  into  the  discussion  at  all?  One  may 
have  said  in  an  unnecessary  criticism  that  space  is 


152  PLURIVERSE 

unlimited  —  unnecessary  and  impertinent  because 
the  very  constitution  or  nature  or  meaning  of  space 
would,  if  called  upon,  exclude  limit  —  but  why 
should  it  be  called  upon  to  reject  an  idle  qualifica- 
tion, to  touch  a  pitch  that  would  defile  it?  It  is 
no  more  unlimited  than  it  is  unpainted,  or  unedu- 
cated ;  the  un  excludes  all  qualification ;  yet  by  mere 
verbal  mention  in  the  same  connection  a  logical  ex- 
pression soils  the  pure  reality. 

It  is  as  if  a  crier  should  go  through  the  streets 
proclaiming  that  Caesar's  wife  is  not  unchaste;  the 
announcement  may  be  true,  and  is  surely  commenda- 
tory, but  the  parties  in  interest  would  hardly  be 
grateful  for  it.  It  was  held  as  slanderous  in  our 
courts,  that  one  man  had  said  to  another,  "You 
never  stole  a  sheep,  oh,  no !  " 

The  aggravation  is  still  heavier  when  the  fact 
(that  any  space  as  given  or  contemplated  can  be 
regarded  as  limited  only  by  more  of  the  same)  is 
construed  as  rendering  space  self-limited,  and  as 
countenancing  various  other  claims  of  self-relation: 
especially  that  of  the  ego,  which,  although  confessed 
as  an  "impossibility"  for  understanding  and  imag- 
ination, is  speculative  fact.  It  is  Harris's  illusion 
that  the  unlimited  gets  unity  and  limit  from  its 
mention  as  the  or  this  —  a  nominal  concept  —  as 
if  the  unknowable  were  really  known  as  such.  This 
is  the  sphinx  riddle :  he  who  knows  the  universe  shall 
be  swallowed  by  it.  There  is  no  such  knowledge,  nor 
any  such  object  for  knowledge. 

Especially  Harris  labored  under  the  Hegelian 
obsession  that  negation  is  determination,  always 
positive  in  its  results;  that  all  assertion  is  affirma- 


SELF-RELATION  153 

tive,  the  negation  of  negation;  that  destruction  is 
logically  impossible.  If  the  red  slayer  thinks  he 
slays,  he  makes  the  mistake  of  his  life ;  he  knows  not 
of  the  cunning  ways  in  which  the  dialectic  can  pass 
and  turn  again.  That  a  thing  has  no  quality  —  is 
not  that  a  quality?  The  unknowable  —  is  it  not 
known  as  such?  Does  not  the  breath  that  would 
vacate  it  come  back  into  your  own  face?  Not  be- 
ing? well,  since  you  mention  it,  is  it  not  one  kind  of 
being?  Nothing  —  if  it  is  not  something,  how  can 
you  think  of  it  ?  or  the  ego  —  if  not  self -known,  how 
does  it  think  of  itself? 

But  Kant  said  well,  you  do  not  think  of  it ;  you 
merely  talk  about  it.  The  Kantian  yataghan  cuts 
the  props  from  under  these  dialectic  constructions  — 
these  verbal  concepts  which  no  percepts,  which  no 
experience  may  confirm.  Negation  that  does  not 
vacate  and  destroy  is  but  a  scrap  of  paper.  What 
is  meant  by  nothing  does  not  get  into  thought,  nor 
into  print.  Non-being  is  flatus  vocis  —  a  mist  that 
rises  in  our  dreams  from  the  compost  of  decay  and 
death.  With  Parmenides  behind  us  we  shall  hardly 
countenance  a  not-being  which  can  be  only  in  a  de- 
lusive array  of  words. 

The  solution  of  all  this  dialectic  confusion,  in 
which  the  plain  man's  understanding  is  insulted,  and 
truth  is  stultified  as  impossible  or  contradictory,  lies 
in  the  fact  that  its  propagators  have  not  sufficient 
dignity  or  self-respect  to  question  what  has  unfor- 
tunately become  conventional  —  to  discern  that 
many  words  are  misused,  and  that  many  have  no 
meaning  whatsoever.  The  greatest  mistake  of  all 
is  that  the  world  must  be  rational,  and  that  there 


154  PLURIVERSE 

must  be  possible  a  true  statement  and  explanation 
of  it,  commensurate  with  our  finite  capacity.  How 
puerile,  or  at  least  how  inexpert,  is  this  argument 
that  since  the  whole  can  have  no  other  cause  it  must 
be  the  cause  of  itself  —  even  though  the  doctrine 
shall  revolt  our  understanding,  and  pretend  that 
words  need  no  basis  in  empirical  reality  —  boasting 
with  Novalis,  that  "although  Philosophy  can  bake 
no  bread  she  can  give  us  God,  freedom  and  immor- 
tality" —  three  words  of  wholly  problematical  mean- 
ing. A  cause  that  would  really  explain  should 
hardly  fail  us  for  daily  bread ;  it  might  even  afford 
an  occasional  pot  of  beer. 

It  will  be  perceived,  as  regards  Mr.  Harris's  recog- 
nition of  the  psychological  embarrassment  in  think- 
ing self-relation  —  which  he  like  the  majority  of 
thinkers,  has  to  confess  as  mechanically  contra- 
dictory —  his  main  assurance  as  to  first  cause  being 
"causa  suit}t  is  that  it  is  the  only  possible  cause  or 
reason  that  can  be  used  as  explanation.  He  would 
be  well  disposed  to  say  with  Fichte,  "Ask  not  for  the 
how  —  be  satisfied  with  the  fact."  He  would  join 
heartily  with  Prof.  Ladd  in  boundless  reverence  for 
the  unaccountable  "prime  fact  of  knowledge."  But 
if  one  shall  say  to  them,  Have  it  your  own  way :  there 
can  be  no  other  first  cause  than  "causa  sui":  yet 
how  if  there  is  no  cause  at  all,  in  the  sense  of  radi- 
cal explanation  to  us  or  to  reason?  The  merely 
formal  phrase,  "causa  sui"  will  not  come  down  to 
the  relief  of  mechanical  sense,  or  of  imagination  en- 
deavoring to  picture  the  self-swallowing  stunt,  or  of 
a  thing's  being  its  own  creator  before  it  is  born. 
Admit  that  "causa  sui"  is  the  only  logical  state- 


SELF-RELATION  155 

ment  of  the  problem;  that  or  any  other  statement 
may  be  worthless  for  explanation  —  which  will  re- 
quire a  certain  treatment  of  the  time  element  — which 
they  have  not  yet  achieved.  Every  active  relation 
implies  a  lapse  of  time,  which  divides  the  instant  in- 
tegrity of  any  hypothetic  self-relation.  This  is  the 
difficulty  with  all  self-relation,  as  a  principle,  or  a 
fertility,  that  the  miracle  which  it  is  to  perform  by 
its  activity  is  already  pre-supposed  as  accomplished 
in  its  divine  nature  or  essence. 

It  recalls  the  juggler,  Katerfelte,  "with  his  hair 
on  end  at  his  own  wonders  —  wondering  for  his 
bread." 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  NEGATIVE 

SINCE  we  find  that  the  only  plausible  reason  of 
things  is  reason  as  a  reason  for  itself  by  self- 
relation  —  and  that  this  is  impossible  logically, 
and  considerable  only  as  seeming  a  psychological  fact 
in  empirical  "self-consciousness"  —  and  that  this 
seeming  fact  (self-consciousness)  is  by  our  highest 
authorities  determined  as  an  illusion;  and  since  we 
find,  in  the  problem  of  causation,  that  no  being  can 
be  held  to  contain  potentially  another  being,  neither 
to  empirically  produce  another  being ;  there  remains 
only,  to  account  for  existence,  the  presumption  of 
its  eternity  as  matter  of  fact,  whose  only  ground  of 
being,  in  either  fact  or  observation,  is  the  void,  con- 
ceivable as  in  lieu  of  all  content,  and  named,  for 
speculative  purposes,  the  negative. 

It  may  be  admitted  (at  least  by  us,  who  live  only 
to  surely  die)  that  a  real  void  (however  may  be  the 
case  of  a  logical  one)  would  vacate  all  being  and 
distinction;  but  since  being  in  general  persists  in 
spite  of  our  solipsistic  failure,  the  question  remains, 
as  to  being  in  general,  whether  there  is  a  principle 
of  necessity  which  eternally  holds  and  held  it  posi- 
tive in  fact  —  not  antagonized  but  rather  sustained 
and  emphasized  by  the  void,  which  should  prove 
only  a  suggestion  or  shadow  of  our  own  finite  fate 

156 


THE  NEGATIVE  157 

and  limitation,  against  the  ever-living  truth  and 
fact  that  being  must  be. 

Parmenides  argued  earnestly  that  "not-being"  is 
only  a  play  upon  words,  with  no  thought  behind 
them. 

Hegel  argued,  quite  as  earnestly,  that  in  the  world 
of  pure  thought,  where  the  matter  should  be  deter- 
mined, the  vitality  of  the  negative  is  essentially  the 
life  of  being,  and  that  negation  is  "positive  in  its 
result." 

In  the  same  spirit  Heracleitus  made  opposition  the 
basis  of  distinction,  and  strife  the  father  of  things. 
Said  Parmenides: 

"Listen  and  I  will  instruct  thee,  what  are  the  two 
only  paths  of  research  open  to  thinking.  One  path 
is :  That  Being  doth  be,  and  Non-Being  is  not :  this 
is  the  way  of  Conviction,  for  Truth  follows  hard  in 
her  footsteps.  The  other  path  is:  That  Being  is 
not  (All)  and  Non-Being  must  be.  This  one,  I  tell 
thee  in  truth,  is  an  all-incredible  pathway;  for  thou 
never  canst  know  what  is  not  (for  none  can  con- 
ceive it)  nor  canst  thou  give  it  expression,  for  one 
thing  are  Thinking  and  Being. 

"Never  I  ween  shalt  thou  learn  that  Being  can 
be  of  what  is  not.  For  is  is  of  Being ;  Nothing  must 
needs  not  be. 

"What  is  is  birthless  and  deathless,  whole  and 
moveless  and  ever  enduring.  Never  it  was  or  shall 
be,  but  the  ALL  simultaneously  now  is,  one  con- 
tinuous one. 

"How  or  whence  it  hath  sprung  I  shall  not  per- 
mit thee  to  tell  me ;  neither  to  think  'of  what  is  not'  ; 
for  none  can  say  or  imagine  how  Not-Is  becomes 


158  PLURIVERSE 

Is,  or,  what  should  have  stirred  it,  after  or  before 
its  beginning,  to  issue  from  nothing? 

"Men  have  set  up  for  themselves  twin  shapes  to  be 
named  by  Opinion  (ONE  they  cannot  set  up,  and 
herein  they  wander  in  error),  and  they  have  made 
them  distinct  in  their  natures,  and  marked  them  with 
tokens.  .  .  .  All  things  now  being  marked  with 
the  names  of  Light  and  of  Darkness  —  yea,  set  apart 
by  the  powers  of  One  or  the  Other,  so  that  the  All 
is  at  once  full  of  light  and  invisible  darkness,  both 
being  equal,  and  naught  being  common  to  one  with 
the  other." 

As  unfalteringly  as  he  defined  idealism  against 
the  face  of  experience,  so  Hegel  thus  announced  the 
positive  negative,  with  its  essential  contradiction, 
as  the  logical  necessity  of  reason,  and  the  only  pos- 
sibility of  philosophy: 

"The  only  thing  (  !)  essentially  necessary  to  an 
insight  of  the  method  of  scientific  evolution  is  a 
knowledge  of  the  logical  nature  of  the  negative :  that 
it  is  positive  in  its  results.  .  .  .  Its  self-contradic- 
tion does  not  result  in  zero,  or  the  abstract  nothing, 
but  rather  in  the  subversion  of  its  special  content 
(or  topic)  only.  ...  In  the  result  is  preserved 
essentially  that  from  which  it  resulted." 

This,  then,  is  philosophy:  what  is  not,  and  cost 
nothing,  is  the  matrix  and  the  mother  of  what  is ;  yon 
mist  that  rises  from  the  rotting  compost  heap  —  it 
is  the  breath  of  life.  .  .  .  THE  secret  then,  the 
problem,  the  Mystery,  the  Veil,  and  what  is  behind 
it?  —  The  VOICE  is  "dialectic"  —  the  Vision  is  of 
a  fig-leaf  on  the  occult  genitals  of  Death. 

Dialectic,  which  for  Plato  meant  conversation,  as 


THE  NEGATIVE  159 

rendering  opposite  sides,  is  an  esoteric  diversion,  in 
which  the  negative  has  been  exploited  as  a  quasi 
positive.  Whether  seriously  or  otherwise,  Derao- 
critus  is  credited  or  discredited  with  the  saying, 
"Being  is  by  nothing  more  real  than  not-being." 
Equivalently  he  might  have  said,  "Visible  and  ma- 
terial body  is  no  more  real  than  invisible  and  formal 
mind"  —  and  then  added,  "Logical  concepts  are  as 
real  as  rational  percepts ;  and  but  for  Aristotle,  and 
especially  but  for  Kant,  the  notion  might  still  be 
tolerated."  The  whim  is  as  old  as  Lucifer,  and  as 
man's  fall  through  knowledge,  that  by  some  invet- 
erate perversity  nothing  must  be  something.  Even 
Parmenides,  however  stoutly  affirming  as  the  only 
"truth"  that  "being  alone  is,  and  non-being  is  not," 
confessed  to  an  "opinion,"  held  with  all  the  con- 
viction of  empirical  life,  that  there  was  a  being  of 
not-being,  which  yet  should  be  carefully  ignored. 

(Even  Shakespeare  furthered  the  jest,  in  "King 
Lear."  The  king  had  retorted  on  some  extrava- 
gance of  his  "fool,"  that  it  was  "nothing" ;  and  could 
Nuncle  make  no  use  of  nothing?  This  was  a  pity, 
since  the  king  had  so  much  of  it :  all  his  rents  footed 
up  to  just  that  amount ;  whereat  the  loyal  Kent  re- 
marked, "This  is  not  altogether  fool,  my  lord.") 

"Nothing"  proves  a  very  available  stuff;  it  is  at 
least  half  of  the  stock  of  metaphysics.  In  science 
too,  it  has  indispensable  uses.  A  couple  of  gallons 
of  nothing,  for  instance,  are  indispensable  in  the 
experiment  proving  that  in  vacuo  the  guinea  and  the 
feather  fall  synchronously,  and  that  a  wheel  will  re- 
volve therein  for  an  unaccountable  time.  It  would 
be  necessary,  too,  in  the  proof  that  the  resisting  and 


160  PLURIVERSE 

negative  air  is  the  positive  sustenance  and  fulcrum 
of  a  bird's  flight  through  it,  and  that  in  fact  a  bird 
could  not  fly  in  a  vacuum  at  all.  This  obvious  in- 
ference is  very  consolatory  in  any  conjecture  as  to 
the  forces  requisite  to  the  motion  of  the  celestial 
orbs ;  for  if  a  planet's  atmosphere  is  wholly  its  own, 
that  envelope  should  not  retard  its  motion  in  clear 
space;  and  as  our  moon  has  no  atmosphere  at  all, 
one  whiff  from  a  goose  feather  should  suffice  to  re- 
volve it  till  time  shall  be  no  more. 

Even  thus  we  may  gossip  at  the  verge  of  the 
insidious  maelstrom  that  has  engulfed  all  the  philoso- 
phic sails  that  have  defied  its  vortex.  The  fault  was 
not  in  their  stars  but  in  themselves  that  they  went 
down  as  underlings.  The  rash  assertion  of  Hegel 
in  the  beginning  of  his  logic,  that  being  and  not- 
being  are  the  same,  should  have  been  of  itself  a  signal 
of  logical  distress.  The  same?  Certainly,  weighed 
as  abstractions,  mere  topics  of  thought,  they  are  as 
such  the  same.  Even  contradictions  are  facts,  for 
discussion,  or  dialectic.  Reality,  negation,  nonsense, 
the  unutterable,  the  unthinkable,  are  alike  real  topics 
for  metaphysical  talk;  but  they  have  no  basis  or 
foothold  in  the  dependable  world;  they  are  verbal 
concepts  which  have  no  perceptual  corroboration  — 
adjectives  flying  regardless  of  appropriate  nouns. 
The  moment  that  being  and  not-being  are  required 
to  serve  as  qualifications  of  any  objective  reality, 
their  difference  is  evident  and  fatal.  All  the  value  in 
the  world,  and  all  distinction  of  values,  are  in  being, 
while  all  non-being  is  alike  and  worthless.  When  it  is 
said  that  non-being  has  being,  or  that  nothings  are 
somethings,  what  are  the  empirical  percepts  that 


THE  NEGATIVE  161 

should  staminate  this  fluorescent  nonentity?  They 
have  no  concrete  life  or  force.  No  Kantian  can 
affirm  non-being. 

Experience  and  history,  reflection  upon  sleep  and 
death,  the  admonition  that  there  is  no  knowledge  nor 
device  in  the  grave  whither  thou  goest,  have  indeed 
impressed  upon  us  the  sad  truth  that  there  is  and 
was  for  us  a  condition  of  not-being;  but  these  em- 
pirical considerations  have  no  bearing  on  the  simi- 
larity of  being  and  not-being  save  as  logical  abstrac- 
tions regardless  of  their  concrete  filling  or  special 
content.  In  saying  that  being  and  not-being  are  the 
same,  Hegel  could  not  mean  that  life  and  death  are 
the  same ;  his  logical  interest  lay  in  the  fact  that  it 
requires  force  to  destroy  as  well  as  to  create  and  that, 
therefore,  in  the  self-relation  of  the  ego  as  subject- 
object,  the  objective  or  quasi  passive  side  implicates 
an  equal  subjective  initiative.  But  the  goal  of  his 
logic  was  development  of  the  Absolute  Spirit  as  the 
essential  activity  and  process  of  self-relation. 

Stoutly  ignoring  the  unknown  root  of  all  sense  and 
human  understanding,  Hegel  fell  back  upon  the 
purely  logical  and  dialectic  Inevitable  of  Heraclei- 
tus,  and  as  a  merely  formal  and  speculative  propo- 
sition the  Inevitable  is  sure  and  simple  enough,  if 
we  allow  the  single  presumption  that  opposition  is 
the  basis  of  distinction  —  or,  as  Heracleitus  phrased 
it,  that  "strife  is  the  father  of  all  things."  If  be- 
ing is  such  and  conceivable,  not  as  an  independent 
entity,  but  only  as  the  opposite  of  not-being,  they 
cannot  be  separated ;  either  assures  the  presence  of 
the  other,  and  so  the  inevitable  existence  of  both. 
Total  non-being  is  impossible  in  or  for  thought. 


162  PLURIVERSE 

The  being  of  a  hole  is  as  real  as  that  of  a  plug ;  as  a 
mere  topic  of  thought  the  one  is  quite  as  convers- 
able as  the  other.  But  such  conversation  is  mere 
diversion.  If  we  were  comparing  reality  and  un- 
reality, the  one,  as  a  topic,  would  be  as  real  as  the 
other;  but  that  kind  of  reality  is  mere  supposition, 
a  play  of  fancy,  the  stuff  that  dreams  are  made  on, 
a  saying  that  the  hole  is  essential  in  the  doughnut. 

Negation  is  mighty  only  by  reason  of  its  positive 
given  force.  In  a  world  of  purely  logical  forms  and 
schemes  this  were  the  acme  of  triumphant  thinking. 
But  when  the  plain  man  asks  after  its  results,  he  is 
put  off  with  the  glory  of  the  action;  the  strength 
displayed  in  destruction  is  the  same  as  that  proper 
for  creation.  But  if  negation  is  positive  in  its 
results,  wherein  does  it  oppose  assertion?  and  by 
what  means  shall  we  get  any  denial  or  any  destruc- 
tive result?  Our  only  inference  is  that  assertion 
and  negation  are  alike  merely  verbally  constructive, 
and  that  real  destruction  is  logically  impossible ;  the 
void  remains. 

Contemplating  the  field  of  psychological  experi- 
ence, Heracleitus  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to 
signalize  the  fact  that  one  is  made  by  limiting,  and 
that  everything  gets  special  existence  not  only  by 
contrast,  but  by  opposition  and  strife  with  its  en- 
vironment, which  serves  as  background  and  frame, 
and  gives  it  distinction,  relief  and  individuality.  In 
the  consciousness  of  lights  and  shadows,  and  of  pains 
and  pleasures ;  in  the  contemplation  of  the  ups  and 
downs  of  fortune ;  in  the  estimation  of  size  and  value, 
and  the  appreciation  of  the  present  as  in  memory  of 


THE  NEGATIVE  163 

the  past,  everywhere  he  found  the  One  getting  its 
distinction,  emphasis  and  eclat  through  a  compensa- 
tion of  the  Other.  This  is  the  most  striking  and 
poetical  lesson  of  experience,  and  it  oriented  his 
metaphysical  speculation  to  the  merely  relative  truth 
that  being  depends  upon  not-being. 

We  may  say  here,  somewhat  gratuitously  per- 
haps, that  this  was  rather  a  poetical  than  a  philoso- 
phical observation  on  the  part  of  Heracleitus.  Had 
he  enforced  and  brought  home  his  principle  — 
that  "strife  is  the  father  of  things,"  or,  that  oppo- 
sition is  the  basis  of  distinction  —  he  would  have 
had  to  found  reason  upon  unreason,  as  equally 
authoritative,  and  conclusion  would  have  become 
impossible. 

It  is  our  instant  necessity  here  to  see  that  however 
contrast  and  compensation  enter  into  and  emphasize 
distinction,  they  do  not  infer  nor  require  the  oppo- 
sition which  has  been  utilized  to  construe  the  in- 
evitable by  making  the  mere  contrast  of  being  and 
not-being  the  productive  ground  of  true  being,  on 
the  theory  that  negation  is  positive  in  its  result. 
This  result,  properly  considered,  is  merely  logical, 
formal  and  schematic.  Let  non-being,  in  its  tran- 
scendent thought-world,  be  ever  so  much  a  reality 
and  a  proper  topic  for  contemplation  —  whereof  we 
may  consistently  discuss  the  existence,  or  the  pos- 
sibility, as  well  as  we  may  the  prevalence  of  the  con- 
tent of  being  —  yet  we  instantly  perceive  that  being 
proper  embraces  and  identifies  the  whole  real  world, 
and  that  not-being  is  only  a  mental  supposition  of 
death,  which,  realized,  would  vacate  the  field  of 
thought.  It  lives  only  as  a  hypothetic  mental  re- 


164  PLURIVERSE 

lation  or  supposition.  The  fact  appears  that  mere 
opposition  will  not  assure  being,  and  that  there  may 
be  difference  and  distinction  without  antagonism, 
peacefully  side  by  side,  however  contrast  may  em- 
phasize it:  this  because  contrast  may  come  as  well 
from  new  excess  in  nature  as  from  the  negation  and 
non-being  of  the  passing  or  the  past. 

Granting  that  a  relative  non-being  is  necessary  to 
logical  or  conceptual  being,  and  that  conceptual  dif- 
ference is  necessary  to  logical  and  truthful  identity ; 
granted  that  dark  lines  and  shadows  are  necessary 
and  relevant  to  the  "high  lights"  of  the  picture; 
granted  that  it  were  practically  the  same  disaster, 
whether  all  the  light  or  all  the  darkness  went  away ; 
you  are  yet  nowhere  near  the  affirmation  that  dark- 
ness is  necessary  to  light,  or  that  non-being  is  the 
ground  of  being,  or  that  opposition  rather  than 
friendly  difference  is  necessary  to  subjective  distinc- 
tion. Nature  solves  this  problem  by  her  purely  gra- 
tuitous and  miraculous  excess  and  bounty,  putting 
all  assertion  into  being,  and  outfacing  all  pretense 
of  positive  negation  with  her  everlasting  Yea.  "God 
is  light,"  said  the  ancient,  "and  in  Him  is  no  dark- 
ness at  all."  Yet  "one  star  differs  from  another 
star  in  glory";  there  is  no  cosmic  shame;  there  is 
no  cosmic  evil ;  but  there  are  degrees  of  light  which 
afford  aesthetic  shadows  of  their  own  order  and  gen- 
ius. The  all-bounteous  Good  of  Nature  ruffles  with 
compensating  waves  the  deep  that  knows  no  change, 
and  lends  variety  and  beauty  to  the  spiritual  world 
as  fortune  favors  one  with  ten  talents,  and  another 
with  five,  and  another  with  only  one.  And  if  he  who 
has  none  at  all  shall  renounce  a  losing  game  and 


THE  NEGATIVE  165 

destroy  himself,  who  knows  what  compensation  may 
attend  his  faith  in  another  world  than  this. 

We  may  illustrate  the  utter  relativity,  or  the 
purely  mental  hypothecation  of  "the  negative,"  by 
the  revolution  of  a  spoked  wheel.  Fancy  such  a 
wheel  before  us,  on  a  track  that  leads  to  the  right. 
We  first  lift  the  wheel  from  the  track  and  revolve 
it  around  its  own  centre,  its  top  rolling  to  the  right 
while  its  bottom  goes  to  the  left.  If  now,  while 
the  wheel  is  still  revolving,  we  set  it  down  upon  the 
track,  the  bottom  will  catch  and  hold  to  the  track 
in  a  punctual  and  motionless  contact ;  the  centre  will 
move  to  the  right  with  the  same  speed  with  which 
the  bottom  was  before  moving  toward  the  left,  and 
the  top  will  go  to  the  right  with  twice  the  speed  of 
the  centre,  while  the  leftward  motion  of  the  bottom 
is  lost,  being  shifted  to  the  centre :  there  is  no  longer 
any  leftward  motion  of  the  wheel  in  the  real  world. 
But  if  now  we  go  with  the  wheel  —  fix  our  identity 
and  viewpint  at  the  centre  of  the  wheel,  regardless 
of  its  environment,  the  leftward  motion  of  the  bottom 
is  as  rapid  and  real  as  it  was  before  it  caught  the 
track  —  but  this  motion  is  only  assumed  as  relative 
to  an  artificial  and  unreal  viewpoint  —  there  is  no 
one  living  at  the  centre  of  the  wheel,  and  there  is  no 
such  backward  or  negating  motion  for  any  observer 
in  the  world  of  real  experience. 

We  may  readily  convert  this  demonstration  to  the 
assumed  "positive  result"  of  the  negative  as  a  factor 
in  the  sustenance  or  production  of  being.  Let  it 
be  granted  that  in  a  static  and  changeless  world, 
where  contrast  or  even  opposition  were  necessary  to 
distinction,  non-being  would  be  necessary  to  being. 


166  PLURIVERSE 

But  such  a  static  world  is  a  purely  mental  supposi- 
tion; there  is  no  such  world  in  time's  reality.  On 
the  contrary  in  the  gratuitous  becoming  of  the  ex- 
cess of  Nature,  being  gets  vital  distinction  in  the 
on-coming  future,  and  becomes  itself  the  negative  or 
background  in  a  world  new-born.  Here  is  no  Hera- 
cleitic  strife  or  struggle  for  mere  being  —  no  grudg- 
ing result  of  the  mere  activity  of  negation  and  oppo- 
sition, but  rather  the  bounty  of  a  miraculous  be- 
coming, ever  new,  and  ever  more. 

We  remarked  above  that  in  saying  that  "being 
and  not-being  are  the  same"  Hegel  did  not  pretend 
that  life  and  death  are  the  same.  But  why  not.  if 
he  meant  anything  that  concerns  humanity?  As  a 
literary  fact  the  words  life  and  death  and  truth  have 
no  patronage  in  transcendental  philosophy;  neither 
does  any  fact  of  experience  have  weight  in  formal 
logic  —  a  kind  of  esoteric  toy  which,  like  a  frag- 
ment of  looking  glass  in  the  hands  of  a  mischievous 
schoolboy,  can  be  made  to  throw  artificial  reflections 
into  startled  eyes. 

It  is  logically  true  that  one  is  made  by  limiting  — 
that  its  determination  is  negation  —  as  well  by  ex- 
clusion as  by  inclusion;  and  it  is  ever  true  that  in 
contemplation,  as  in  a  picture,  light  and  being  get 
emphasis  and  eclat  from  darkness  and  death.  But 
this  contemplation  is  but  artistic  conception.  When 
the  inexorable  sure  method  demands  the  percepts  of 
this  fruitful  negation  —  the  basic  experience  that 
should  staminate  this  fluorescent  inanity  —  it  finds 
that  the  real  negative,  as  the  smouldering  compost 
from  which  the  negative  concept  is  exhaled,  is  the  sad 
fate  of  humanity  when  the  lights  are  out  and  the 


THE  NEGATIVE  167 

curtain  is  down,  and  the  voice  of  the  Preacher  ad- 
monishes us  that  there  is  no  wisdom  nor  device  nor 
knowledge  in  the  grave  whither  we  go.  Transcen- 
dental dialectic,  positive  negation,  truth  as  contra- 
diction and  essential  opposition  and  inconsequent 
process  —  all  this  is  but  a  house  of  cards,  the  base- 
less fabric  of  a  vision,  an  insubstantial  pa'geant  that 
will  leave  not  a  rack  behind.  No  less,  it  is  the  best 
that  philosophy  has  done,  or  promises  to  do. 

We  should  gather  from  the  citations  foregoing 
that  in  self-relation  and  positive  negation  the  Ger- 
man genius  has  exhausted  the  only  sources  or 
ground  of  cosmic  explanation.  If  the  Whole  is  to 
be  in  any  way  exploited  it  must  be  by  either  itself 
or  nothing  —  a  desperate  alternative  surely ;  yet 
we  have  seen  however  that  "nothing  can  come  from 
nothing,"  the  negative  may  be  at  least  logically 
fruitful,  and  "not  altogether  fool." 

But  the  transcendental  exfoliation  exhausted  all 
the  fertility  of  its  ground.  Poor  Psyche  became  so 
soiled  and  mussed-up  by  dialectic  manipulation  that 
her  sacred  character  was  compromised.  If  mere 
logical  concepts  could  be  posed  as  realities,  mind- 
stuff  was  no  better  than  matter-stuff,  which  was 
equally  feasible  and  less  disputable.  Besides,  Hegel 
had  insisted  upon  exalting  his  Absolute  to  the  very 
questionable  eminence  of  Personality:  "The  high- 
est, steepest  thought  is  Personality."  Such  a  claim 
was  shadowed  not  only  by  all  the  atrocities  of  the 
old,  but  by  the  present  controversy  over  the  Chris- 
tian divinity. 

The  Good  has  a  promising  name,  but  it  is  not 
adequate  as  a  first  principle.  It  is  tainted  with 


168  PLURIVERSE 

passion  and  personality ;  it  is  partial  and  hence  un- 
just; its  favor  to  the  present  depletes  the  justice  due 
to  the  unborn.  There  is  but  so  much  for  all,  and 
what  comparative  has  a  surplus  to  spare?  Shall 
not  justice  suffice?  The  Good  reeks  with  the  old 
duplexity;  justice  alone  is  passionless  and  integral 
and  safe:  for  what  hinders  that  the  unbalanced  Good 
should  turn  into  evil  at  its  personal  whim?  It  does 
not  appear  that  the  Good  had  been  deserved,  and  the 
flush  on  its  countenance  argues  distemperature  in 
the  bosom  of  fate.  v 

Surely  we  must  welcome  the  Good;  the  downpour 
of  gratuitous  Nature  dissolves  the  logical  necessity 
which  renders  negation  positive  in  its  results;  but 
for  philosophy  as  explanation  the  gift  of  nature 
still  taxes  the  wonder  which  the  charm  of  dialectic 
had  for  its  moment  meretriciously  disenchanted. 
The  secret  remains  intact.  The  Good  is  not  the  best. 

In  any  event,  personality  is  the  last  philosophical 
canon  of  divinity.  "Ever  not  quite"  is  a  motto  par- 
ticularly significant  here.  The  groundlings  of  skep- 
ticism will  degrade  its  most  spiritual  conceptions  with 
visceral  necessities  which  impeach  the  sincerity  of 
unqualified  devotion.  There  is  a  flaw  in  its  suprem- 
acy, a  fig-leaf  on  the  statue.  Not  even  hatred  and 
bigotry  shall  be  genuine  while  they  spare  a  loin- 
cloth to  the  uplifted  Christ. 

We  cannot  wonder  that  a  surfeit  of  personal  ideal- 
ism put  forth  a  score  of  post-Kantian  philosophemes 
in  the  direction  of  materialism,  all  in  favor  of  a  de- 
personalized intelligence  which  dispensed  with  God 
while  utilizing  at  will  His  attributes.  Schopen- 
hauer charged  in  from  the  field  of  pantheism  with 


THE  NEGATIVE  169 

a  blind  and  striving  will,  still  abetted  by  an  immi- 
nent clairvoyancy  —  most  happily  characterized  by 
our  Professor  Howison  as  "a  kind  of  Blind  Tom." 
Hartmann  followed  with  the  Unconscious  —  a 
merely  titular  pose  of  the  subconscious,  as  some- 
what that  can  see  without  eyes,  and  speak  without 
articulation  —  the  voice  of  the  heart,  as  of  Jacobi, 
and  the  "something  higher  than  science"  which 
Schelling  (with  many  others)  said  he  surely  knew. 
Then  came  Duhring  with  the  Actual,  freshly  qualify- 
ing the  "thing  in  itself"  (which  Kant  had  left  as 
merely  problematical),  as  the  real  thing  that  by  a 
vacation  of  solipsism,  and  a  restoration  of  practical 
sanity,  would  restore  reality  to  the  common  sense 
which  idealism  had  abused.  And  then  came  Lange 
(contemporary  in  time,  and  consecutive  only  in  the 
process  of  mental  evolution),  overweaning  the  rally- 
ing cry  of  "back  to  Kant"  with  an  impeachment  of 
that  Master  himself.  For  Kant  had  rushed  where 
Aristotle  could  tread  only  tentatively,  and  had 
rather  conceitedly  assumed  to  name  all  of  the  "cate- 
gories" (the  innate  faculties  or  laws  of  thought)  in 
accordance  with  some  determinate  principle.  Lange, 
breaking  down  Kant's  perfunctory  bars  to  scientific 
progress,  insisted  that  the  a  priori  as  well  as  the 
merely  sensuous  was  divinely  "given,"  and  that  the 
laws  of  the  mind,  even  as  the  laws  of  matter,  shall  be 
codified  by  induction  —  so  clearing  the  path  for  that 
trend  toward  materialism,  or  toward  that  mitigation 
of  its  esoteric  crudity,  which  has  encumbered  the 
post-Kantian  regime. 

And  Lange  forthright  staunched  his  criticism  of 
the  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason"  by  the  instance  of 


170  PLURIVERSE 

motion  as  one  of  the  "forms"  of  sense,  equally  with 
space  and  time,  and  possibly  the  key  to  various  para- 
doxes, which  it  factually  is. 

I  shall  introduce  in  the  next  chapter  a  neglected 
handmaid  of  Truth,  a  sort  of  metaphysical  Cinder- 
ella, under  the  title  of  Ancillary  Evidence,  hoping 
thereby  to  lend  something  of  dignity  to  that  catch- 
word, "ever  not  quite,"  which  Professor  James 
adopted  as  Pluralism's  heraldic  device.  Her  cre- 
dentials shall  be  at  once  signal  and  authentic.  There 
are  in  philosophy  many  loose  ends  of  the  inevitable 
duplexity,  many  theoretical  oppositions  whose  poles 
do  not  quite  meet ;  there  is  a  penumbra  that  defeats 
every  claim  to  explicit  definition  and  contact.  For 
example,  in  the  saying  (as  old  as  Heracleitus)  "be- 
ing and  not  being  are  the  same,"  there  is  this  dis- 
crepancy at  least  that  they  cannot  be  quite  the  same, 
so  long  as  the  means  are  different  or  supposing  that 
they  are  the  same,  the  same  is  not  quite  the  same,  for, 
logically,  the  same  is  another  that  is  like  —  there 
needs  two  for  a  sameness,  as  well  as  an  identity  for  a 
difference.  So  nothing  is  not  quite  that ;  if  it  were, 
one  could  not  be  a  thinking  being  and  make  it 
topical. 

But  this  ancillary  penumbra  has  more  serious  im- 
portance in  the  larger  fields  of  philosophy,  where 
ultimate  distinction  wavers  and  confuses  definition. 
The  static  and  dynamic  viewpoints  cannot  be  held 
utterly  asunder;  they  are  both  feasible,  but  if  they 
did  not  somehow  compromise  their  opposition 
thought  and  life  would  be  impossible.  Contradic- 
tion cannot  utterly  contradict,  nor  can  being  ex- 
clusive be.  Kant  said  well  that  all  entities  have 


THE  NEGATIVE  171 

community,  and  that  all  value  and  quantity  have 
intensive  degree,  which  scales  somewhere  between 
entity  and  zero,  but  by  the  ancillary  shading  which 
our  title  adumbrates ;  there  is  no  modus  vivendi  with- 
out it.  The  present  tense,  where  we  must  live,  is 
but  a  hole  in  the  ground,  if  you  withdraw  the  ancil- 
lary presence  of  the  past  and  the  future;  yet  the 
metalogical  life,  our  Cinderella  of  all  work,  as  a 
sprite  rising  from  Truth's  bottomless  well,  clings 
stoutly  to  the  skirts  of  the  vanishing  past,  while 
trembling  on  the  verge  of  the  precipitous  future. 


CHAPTER   VII 


IT  is  written  that  there  can  be  no  science  of  the 
fleeting.     If  this  is  truth  it  should  seem  that  for 
us,  children  of  the  fleeting  time,  there  can  be  no 
science  at   all  —  a  contingency  which  the  experts 
have  done  little  to  assure.     Kant  at  least,  with  his 
two  inseparable  stems  of  an  unknown  root,  shall  re- 
main hopeless  of  any  punctual  unity  of  cognition  in 
the  present  or  in  any  other  tense. 

We  have  criticised  Kant  for  inadvertence  —  as  in 
his  call  for  gravitation  to  "hold  the  universe  to- 
gether," and  his  description  of  space  as  "an  infinite 
quantity,"  and  his  notion  of  reality  "fading  to  zero 
by  degrees";  but  we  have  not  heretofore  charged 
him  with  self-contradiction.  Yet  it  must  now  ap- 
pear that  his  most  recondite  studies  had  neither 
united  nor  unravelled  those  intricacies  of  the  present 
tense  which  ever  recall  that  well  of  Democritus,  be- 
tween whose  implacable  walls  Truth  escapes  in  an 
infinite  divisibility.  Neither  do  we  find  the  embar- 
rassment much  abated  by  the  discontent  of  Messieurs 
Bergson,  James  and  others  with  a  merely  conceptual 
division  between  the  future  and  the  past  —  they  de- 
manding a  perceptual  and  empirical  reality  in  the 

17t 


ANCILLARY  UNITY,  PRESENT  TENSE  173 

present,  which  the  past  has  lost  and  the  future  has 
not  yet  attained. 

As  for  Kant,  we  may  readily  indicate  the  divers- 
ity of  his  viewpoints.  In  his  "Transcendental  Ana- 
lytic" (M.  Muller,  tr.,  p.  150)  he  says:  "In  mere 
succession  existence  always  comes  and  goes  (?)  and 
never  assumes  the  slightest  quantity." 

Yet  on  page  169  this  is  explicitly  reversed:  "Be- 
tween two  moments  there  is  always  a  certain  time, 
and  between  two  states  in  these  two  moments  there 
is  always  a  difference  which  must  have  a  certain 
quantity.  .  .  .  Every  transition  from  one  state 
into  another  takes  place  in  a  certain  time  between 
two  moments  —  a  state  between  two  states." 

This  naive  reverie  merely  shares  the  popular 
confusion,  and  lacks  any  principle  of  definition. 
Rather,  in  fact,  he  disclaims  any  defining  principle, 
saying:  "All  laws  of  nature,  without  distinction, 
are  subject  to  higher  principles  of  the  understand- 
ing, which  they  apply  to  particular  cases  of  ex- 
perience. .  .  .  Experience  furnishes  each  case  to 
which  a  rule  applies." 

This  is  the  essence  of  pragmatism:  that  experi- 
ence furnishes  the  "rule"  of  reason.  What  works 
explains. 

There  is  this  to  be  said  for  Bergson,  James,  and 
their  followers,  that  if  there  is  any  radical  difference 
between  life  and  death,  or  between  being  and  not- 
being,  or  in  fact  between  this  varied  and  wonderful 
universe  or  multiverse  and  nothing  at  all  (if  this  may 
have  any  meaning),  there  should  be  a  radical  differ- 
ence between  the  present  tense  and  either  the  future 
or  the  past.  We  can  hardly  outflank  the  postulate 


174  PLURIVERSE 

that  only  what  it  is  real ;  yet  neither  can  we  conceive 
how  a  nature  that  is  only  as  and  while  becoming 
can  fully  have  become  and  wholly  be.  Yet  if  we 
know  at  all  we  know  that  we  are.  Life  is  real,  it  is 
earnest,  it  is  punitive.  A  rap  on  one's  head  gives 
a  conviction  of  reality  that  no  idea  can  come  forth 
from  it  and  refute.  However  naively  or  unphilo- 
sophically,  we  do  habitually  assume  a  certain  breadth 
and  fullness  of  duration  in  the  moment.  Its  appre- 
hension is  expansive.  Our  ancillary  Cinderella 
clings  to  and  drags  back  the  skirts  of  the  reluctant 
past  with  one  hand,  and  with  the  other  reaches 
forth  to  anticipate  the  future.  And  just  here  is 
the  crux  of  philosophy :  while  the  fact  is  real  enough, 
what  have  we  to  say  about  it  —  is  it  a  concept  or  a 
percept,  or  both,  or  neither,  for  explanation  or 
truth? 

Clearly  perceiving  that  a  merely  conceptual  or 
ideal  division  between  the  past  and  the  future  does 
not  do  justice  to  the  vital  and  in  one  sense  exclusively 
present,  James  proposed  (to  spite  the  "intellec- 
tualists,"  possibly)  that  reality  must  come  in  defi- 
nite empirical  "pulses,"  "drops,"  "beads."  (M. 
Bergson  say  "explosions.")  I  quote  James's  post- 
humous "Problems  of  Philosophy,"  page  155: 

"Either  your  experience  is  of  no  content,  no 
change,  or  it  is  of  a  perceptible  amount  of  change. 
Your  acquaintance  with  reality  grows  literally  by 
beads  or  drops  of  perception." 

Had  any  one  else  made  this  assertion  in  the  pres- 
ence of  my  dear  friend,  the  proponent  would  have 
been  immediately  advised  of  its  crudity  and  one- 
sidedness,  as  merely  "one  way  of  putting  it." 


ANCILLARY  UNITY,  PRESENT  TENSE  175 

Of  course  there  is  a  certain  warrant  for  this  sug- 
gestion of  beads  and  drops  and  pulses,  in  the  nature 
of  sensation,  as  involving  the  alternation  of  atten- 
tion and  rest.  Sensation  comes  in  change;  there  is 
no  call  of  attention  to  the  same.  And  the  grades  of 
difference,  in  the  time  during  which  an  attention  is 
held,  determine  the  length  of  various  functions  and 
features  —  such  as  words  and  phrases,  sermons  and 
plays,  visits,  vacations,  et  cetera.  There  are  many 
ancillary  averages  of  stress  and  strain  in  the  busi- 
ness world. 

The  earth  itself  has  its  tidal  pulsations  and 
climatic  compensations ;  everywhere  there  is  trend 
and  check.  The  wound-up  world  delivers  its  resil- 
ience to  the  swing  of  some  inexorable  pendulum, 
else  the  too-eager  bud  would  explode  into  its  flower ; 
the  incontinent  potential  would  rush  into  the 
arms  of  the  actual,  and  "the  secret  too  long  pent" 
would  dissolve  in  we  know  not  what  of  fiasco  and 
calamity. 

But  the  philosopher's  trouble  begins  with  the  at- 
tempt at  explicit  definition,  in  the  shading  of  these 
beads  and  pulses  into  one  another  in  a  continual 
process.  The  fault  appears  in  conceptually  punc- 
tualizing  the  attack  of  thought  upon  experience,  in 
a  centre-to-centre  directness  which  excludes  all  col- 
lateral and  ancillary  supplement  or  adumbration. 
There  is  a  penumbra  which  defeats  the  exactitude  of 
every  assumed  connection.  There  is  no  explicit 
categorical  punctuality  in  either  our  physical  or  our 
mental  vision.  The  pupil  of  the  eye  —  and  of  "the 
mind's  eye"  as  well  —  is  large;  it  covers  more  than 
we  look  at.  However  we  focus  our  attention,  there 


176  PLURIVERSE 

is  a  field  of  vision  in  which  any  intrusion  is  appre- 
hended. 

It  is  but  a  whim,  saying  that  while  we  may  see 
one  object  we  must  count  three.  I  can  see  three  by 
the  same  intuition  in  which  a  proofreader  detects 
an  error  in  a  word,  by  the  shape  of  it.  This  is  not 
as  saying  I  can  see  seven.  While  my  capacity  is 
open,  the  entrance  is  limited ;  like  Mercutio's  wound, 
it  is  not  as  wide  as  a  church  door,  but  it  will  do.  It 
is  large  enough  to  see  motion,  as  several  places  in 
one  time,  Zeno  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 

What  have  been  characterized  separately  as  under- 
standing and  sense  are  so  pragmatically  interperva- 
sive  that  they  are  only  hypercritically  distinguish- 
able. The  large  pupil  of  the  mind's  eye  vacates 
conceptual  contradictions  by  factual  experience. 

The  empiricists  have  sought  to  staunch  their 
specialty  by  citing  the  stoppages  in  the  production 
of  the  connected  sections  of  a  cinematographic  film. 
The  theory  claimed  as  exemplified  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  the  films  is  that  between  the  sections,  photo- 
graphed one  after  another,  there  is  a  distinct  pause 
for  each  picture,  determined  by  and  known  from  the 
construction  of  the  photographing  apparatus  — 
following  the  ingenious  and  interesting  conceit  that 
the  light  requires  time  in  which  to  act  upon  the 
collodion.  This  dead  stop  in  the  current  time  ap- 
peals to  the  empiricists  as  the  bead,  or  drop,  or  pulse 
of  the  present  tense,  disrupted,  however  briefly,  from 
the  current  time. 

But  this  is  a  very  negligent  hypothesis.  Either 
of  these  beads,  as  a  perceptible  bulk,  is  capable  of  an 
infinite  division,  in  search  of  its  ideal  centre,  which 


ANCILLARY  UNITY,  PRESENT  TENSE  177 

alone  could  be  the  "true"  present.  And  practically 
speaking,  the  machine  can  make  the  beads  thick  or 
thin,  according  to  its  rapidity  in  taking  the  pictures. 

Moreover  the  notion  of  this  dead  stop  may  be 
rather  clever  than  accurate.  Possibly  the  light 
might  act  upon  the  collodion  while  passing,  as  well 
as  when  standing  still.  A  stick  swished  through 
water  does  not  need  a  stoppage  in  order  to  get  wet. 

But  the  chief  interest  of  the  cinema  machine  is  not 
in  its  presumptive  demonstration  of  a  stoppage  of 
motion  to  realize  the  present  tense,  but  rather  in 
its  proof  of  the  possibility  of  motion,  which  Zeno 
and  his  followers  denied  —  claming  that  motion  in 
the  present  instant  would  require  that  a  perceptual 
object  should  have  at  least  two  places  in  one  and 
the  same  time,  which  they  regarded  as  an  impossi- 
bility. 

Speaking  of  Lange  and  his  "History  of  Material- 
ism," I  remarked  upon  his  calling  Kant  to  account 
for  omitting  motion  from  his  list  of  categories,  or 
native  forms  of  mentation.  Kant  himself  in  a  single 
instance  classed  motion  as  of  that  character.  It 
would  be  a  borrowing  of  trouble,  discussing  here 
whether  or  not  motion  is  within  the  grasp  of 
"quantity,  quality,  modality  and  relation" ;  the  pos- 
sibility, of  motion  will  be  determined  by  consideration 
of  time,  space  and  vision  as  punctual  unities  — 
which  they  are  not. 

Observe  first,  in  the  case  of  a  "motion  picture"  • 
say   of   the  uplifting   of   an   arm  —  that   the  real 
motion  of  the  film  and  the  picture-motion  on  the 
screen,  although  synchronous  are  not  coincident ;  the 
arm  may  move  three  feet  in  the  picture  while  moving 


178  PLURIVERSE 

three  inches  in  the  film;  and  this  discrepancy  may 
be  exaggerated  by  moving  the  screen.  The  fact  to 
be  noticed  here  is  that  the  motion  on  the  screen  is  not 
of  the  identity  of  the  sections  of  the  film,  but  of 
their  difference,  which  is  mental;  the  motion  con- 
sists in  the  unity  of  several  sensuous  places  in  one 
mental  time. 

When  you  whirl  a  curlicue  with  a  burning  torch, 
and  make  a  fiery  ring,  the  ring  is  motion;  it  is  the  in- 
finite present  places  of  the  torch  in  one  instant  of 
mental  vision,  or  time.  Your  vision  is  not  of  the 
torch,  which  shows  no  form,  but  of  the  manyness  of 
its  own  present  tenses  and  places  in  a  one  time  for 
you. 

It  may  be  helpful  to  recall  here  our  observations 
on  the  subject  of  size,  as  to  an  eye  supposed  as  large 
as  the  earth;  that  the  1,000  miles  per  hour  of  the 
earth's  peripheral  motion  would  be  withdrawn  into 
the  potentiality  of  the  eye  —  the  Many  of  individual 
experience  into  the  creative  One,  which  is  Creator 
not  by  effort  or  intention,  but  by  essential  and 
eternal  reason.  So  in  the  motion-picture,  where  the 
movement  of  the  arm  is  (not  quite  wholly)  the  dif- 
ference of  the  sections  of  the  film,  the  apparent 
sweep  of  the  arm  is  graduated  by  the  distance  from 
the  camera  to  the  screen.  The  motion  is  relative, 
and  real  only  in  experience  as  seen  from  the  d37namic 
viewpoint. 

Some  of  these  paradoxes  of  philosophy,  and  even 
of  religion,  are  wholly  gratuitous.  Let  Achilles  him- 
self propose  the  paradox,  that  he  cannot  overtake 
the  tortoise,  and  we  see  at  once  that  to  be  a  philoso- 
pher he  has  to  be  a  knave ;  the  mathematical  require- 


ANCILLARY  UNITY,  PRESENT  TENSE  179 

ment  of  the  feat  is  wholly  impertinent  to  its  empiri- 
cal accomplishment. 

The  theoretical  puzzle  of  Achilles  is  that  in  the 
punctual  unity  of  each  repeated  effort  he  must 
achieve  the  distance  between  himself  and  the  reptile 
at  the  outset  —  during  which  accomplishment  the 
latter  will  of  course  have  advanced  somewhat:  and 
this  recurring  somewhat,  however  short  its  space, 
renews  the  whole  problem  —  for  Achilles'  next  effort 
is  assumed  to  be  spent  in  the  covering  of  that  space, 
while  the  tortoise  gains  a  new  one,  offering  the  same 
difficulty  in  the  mathematical  impossibility  of  ex- 
hausting a  whole  by  taking  away  successive  fractions 
of  it,  since  the  remainder  will  ever  be  a  whole.  The 
absurdity  of  the  story  appears  in  the  assumption 
that  the  athlete  is  intellectually  hobbled,  in  his  re- 
peated efforts,  punctually  one  by  one,  so  that  he  may 
not  continue  to  do  his  best  as  in  the  first  endeavor, 
but  must  waste  a  whole  unit  on  the  little  space  which 
his  rival  has  added  to  the  course;  and  it  is  this 
restraint,  which  in  practice  he  would  never  dream  of 
(and  which  might  be  in  another  country),  that  en- 
cumbers an  empirical  proposition  with  a  conceptual 
impossibility,  uncalled  for  and  impertinent. 

The  paradox  is  equally  trival  when  viewed  mathe- 
matically. If  Achilles  must  win  in  mathematical 
rather  than  in  athletic  form,  he  should  have  a 
"show"  by  the  rules  of  the  game.  Given  the  premise 
that  he  has  the  superior  speed,  we  demand  the  per- 
centage of  his  superiority.  If  his  excellence  is  25 
per  cent.,  then  in  four  units  of  any  conceivable  effort 
he  will  reach  the  tortoise,  and  win  the  race. 

We  may  well  doubt  that  Professor  Zeno  displayed 


180  PLURIVERSE 

these  paradoxes  on  his  centre-table  for  the  delecta- 
tion of  his  philosophical  friends.  But  I  have  a 
mounted  owl,  from  whose  beak  hangs  a  card  bear- 
ing this  question: 

Was  ist  nichtf 

No  one  of  my  visitors  has  answered  it. 

We  cannot  dismiss  and  dispose  of  motion  as 
manyness  of  places  —  any  better  than  we  can  shade 
entity  to  zero  by  degrees.  There  is  a  word  or  a 
thought  missing  here  that  shall  grasp  a  vital  unity 
in  continuity  and  process  and  vanishing  intensity 
as  a  whole,  a  category,  a  unique  and  ultimate  given 
mental  fact.  What  boots  a  mere  manyness  without 
a  limiting  discretion  telling  how  many?  We  are 
out  for  blood,  for  the  life  of  reality  in  one  entity. 
If  motion's  manyness  has  forty  thousand  places  the 
category's  great  revenge  has  stomach  for  them  all. 
Time  warms  us  of  a  continuity  without  discretion  — 
the  matter  of  experience  which  conception  violates 
by  cutting  it  into  formal  pieces  with  which  to  effect 
a  more  punctual  contact  with  the  mind.  Again  we 
say  the  pupil  of  the  mind's  eye  is  large.  The  most 
punctual  centre  is  adumbrated  with  ancillary  circles 
through  which  our  closest  inspection  dives  into  the 
well  of  Democritus  —  the  infinite  divisibility  between 
matter  and  form. 

The  thinker  may  readily  juggle  the  consistency  of 
motion  and  time,  saying  that  each  is  a  process,  and 
they  may  advance  coincidently,  side  by  side.  Un- 
fortunately for  this  arrangement,  time  has  but  one 
uniform  speed,  while  motion  in  any  one  time  may 


ANCILLARY  UNITY,  PRESENT  TENSE  181 

have  various  degrees  of  speed,  and  thus  break  the 
identity  of  that  friendly  adjustment. 

If  motion  consists  of  manyness  of  places,  a  whole 
of  motion  demands  a  multiplicity  and  an  extension 
in  the  imputed  unity  of  time  and  attention.  I  see 
no  hope  for  this  in  realization,  as  a  science  of  the 
fleeting,  except  by  an  ancillary  enlargement  and  a 
capability  of  the  grasp  of  manyness  in  the  nominal 
unity  and  identity  of  the  spiritual  one  —  a  categori- 
cal faculty  or  thought-form  for  process,  continu- 
ity, activity,  motion,  or  in  a  word,  time. 

But  all  this  is  matter  for  philosophy,  which  the 
Mystic  does  not  presume  to  explain. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL 

LET  us  hope  that  we  have  learned  somewhat, 
even  if  no  more  than  negatively,  from  the 
route  that  we  have  gone  over.  We  should 
have  learned  that  intelligence,  as  we  realize  it,  is  a 
gift  from  some  "alien  energy,"  and  that  it  fails  of 
any  originating  principle  of  becoming,  or  any  neces- 
sity of  being.  Neither  position  nor  negation  is  fer- 
tile; something  cannot  impregnate  itself,  nor  know 
itself,  nor  move  itself,  nor  assume  any  other  self- 
relation;  and  as  for  negation  or  nothingness  being 
actively  or  processively  positive  in  its  results;  and 
as  for  being,  as  statically  taken,  being  inevitable 
because  logically  posited  in  the  necessity  of  con- 
trast or  opposition  —  we  have  seen  that  the  miracle 
of  gratuitous  nature  furnishes  sufficing  contrast  by 
its  ever-new  position  in  the  everlasting  yea,  and 
leaves  the  dead  negative,  with  a  mourning  wisp  of 
memory  to  be  sure,  to  bury  its  dead. 

But  our  most  reverent  humility  and  self-denial 
have  still  to  consist  with  a  sense  of  our  real  original- 
ity and  unavoidable  responsibility,  which  keeps  our 
philosophy  at  war  with  religion  and  policy.  There 
is  no  philosophical  objection  to  "free  will."  There 
are  unquestionable  powers  or  principles,  whether 
rational  or  blind,  and  their  only  philosophical  de- 

182 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  183 

termination  halts  between  monism  and  pluralism. 
The  miracle  of  originality  is  not  at  all  degraded  by 
its  quasi  appearance  in  human  consciousness,  nor  is 
the  wonder  or  the  problem  of  it  alleviated  by  its 
exaltation  to  a  divine  supremacy;  on  the  contrary, 
such  an  exaltation  disrupts  it  from  psychological 
fact,  only  to  embarrass  its  hypothesis  with  the  ob- 
jections to  which  we  have  found  the  sacred  claims 
of  monism  to  be  not  quite  impeccable. 

Time  may  prove  that  we  have  been  far  and  away 
too  "fresh"  in  our  naive  admiration  and  wonder  at 
autocratic  prestige  and  impossible  unity  and  suprem- 
acy, where  there  is  really  but  a  uniform  democracy, 
an  everywhere,  uncehtered,  and  no  better  than  every 
here.  If  we  should  have  the  good  fortune  to  touch 
bottom  in  the  Mystery,  and  the  sacred  should  become 
secular,  it  would  be  but  a  nine  days'  wonder ;  we  may 
well  doubt  that  it  would  greatly  affect  our  religion 
or  our  politics,  or  our  worldly  ambitions.  The  ob- 
scure and  sedentary  nature  of  philosophy  is  not  due 
to  any  settled  conviction  of  its  hopelessness,  at  least 
not  so  much  as  to  indifference  to  its  problems,  whose 
solution  promises  no  material  advantage  —  nothing 
that  would  make  a  brave  man  happier,  or  a  coward 
braver,  or  a  sensualist  more  spiritual.  On  the  con- 
trary there  are  high  considerations  under  which  it 
seems  better  that  the  Secret  should  still  be  kept. 
The  inevitable  stales,  while  Doubt  and  Hope  are  sis- 
ters. Not  for  aught  that  philosophy  might  promise 
could  Tithonus  have  been  reconciled  to  an  immortal- 
ity which  he  could  not  escape. 

We  shall  find  that  the  problem  of  moral  re- 
sponsibility, as  divided  between  human  and  divine 


184  PLURIVERSE 

authority,  was  promptly  solved  by  the  Master  in 
pragmatical  terms.  When  decision  was  required  of 
him,  as  to  submission  whether  to  Caesar  or  to  God, 
he  referred  instantly  to  the  emblem  of  the  power 
prevailing  in  the  immediate  field  of  observation: 
"Render  unto  Caesar  of  the  things  which  are  Caesar's, 
and  unto  God  of  the  things  which  are  God's." 

Of  all  the  world's  religious  teachers,  Jesus  was 
the  most  explicit  and  persistent  in  the  denial  of  man's 
originality,  and  especially  of  his  self-relation.  He 
spoke  for  the  race  when  he  said,  "Of  myself  I  can  do 
nothing."  And  however  he  dwelt  upon  "work"  to 
be  done,  its  performance  or  its  neglect  was  theo- 
logically construed  as  rather  an  evidence  of  divine 
guidance  than  as  a  ground  for  either  reward  or 
punishment  by  the  omnipotent  Ruler. 

Despite  all  the  talk  of  free  will  and  personal  re- 
sponsibility, modern  culture,  especially  since  Gall 
and  Spurzheim,  frankly  and  even  kindly  condones 
the  wide  difference  in  human  organization  and  tem- 
perament. Certain  virtues,  each  to  a  certain  degree, 
the  customs  and  needs  of  society  and  the  dictates  of 
common  sense  will  still  insist  upon;  but  "for  the 
most  part"  a  man  is  now  held  as  little  responsible 
for  his  courage  or  his  constancy  as  he  is  for  his 
mental  endowment.  Those  tough  old  Romans  did 
in  law  hold  the  witness  of  an  action  as  participant 
in  its  results;  and  in  our  own  courts,  not  infre- 
quently in  cases  of  assault,  a  spectator  has  been 
adjudged  as  particeps  criminis;  the  officer  is  en- 
titled to  call  upon  any  bystander  for  assistance; 
but  in  case  of  default  on  the  part  of  a  weak  or  timid 
man  the  jury  is  wisely  permitted  to  consider  and 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  185 

determine  the  personal  equation:  they  are  assumed 
to  know  how  it  is  themselves. 

For  the  philosopher,  God  is  a  logical  point  or 
postulate,  a  concerted  position,  intended  to  locate 
or  focalize  his  main  problem.  For  him  all  questions 
of  responsibility  and  personality  fuse  into  the  logi- 
cal possibilities  of  such  an  assumed  position.  To 
popular  thought,  which  at  first  steadies  its  vision 
upon  some  fancied  fetich  of  a  halo  and  bust,  He  is 
mainly  defined  by  negations:  He  must  be,  but  of 
course,  upon  reflection,  He  cannot  be  this,  and  He 
cannot  be  that  —  until  finally  He  cannot  be  any- 
thing ;  but  in  any  case  He  must  be  "infinite"  —  a 
portentous  adjective,  which  literally  dissipates  all 
conception,  eviscerates  all  content,  and  means 
nothing.  No  man  hath  seen  Him  at  any  time ;  thou 
canst  not  find  out  Him  to  perfection;  nor  »*  He  to 
any  save  as  the  Logos  shall  reveal  Him. 

Said  Fichte:  "I  will  not  attempt  that  which  the 
imperfection  of  my  finite  nature  forestalls,  and  which 
would  be  useless  to  me;  how  Thou  art,  I  may  not 
know.  Thou  knowest  and  wiliest  and  workest,  omni- 
present to  finite  reason;  but  as  I  now  and  always 
must  conceive  of  being,  Thou  art  not." 

It  is  not  strange  that  this  bold  expression  cost 
him  his  professorial  chair. 

Freedom,  attributed  as  a  quality  or  property  of 
anything,  should  infer  the  thing's  exemption  from 
any  influence  or  bearing  or  determination  from  either 
its  environment  or  its  content.  Any  creature  must, 
as  such,  have  a  natural  content,  and  if  active  it 
will  be  a  secondary  cause;  but  so  far  as  it  is  cause 
at  all  it  has  a  given  quality,  and  exemption  from 


186  PLURIVERSE 

this  quality  would  imply  the  nullification  of  its  being. 
The  hypothesis  of  anything  being  free  of  or  unde- 
termined in  its  own  content,  or  as  an  actor  indepen- 
dent of  its  creator,  or  as  responsible  to  its  creator 
in  the  very  instance  of  its  creation  as  an  activity, 
should  require  at  least  a  very  difficult  defense. 

The  popular  notion  of  "free  will"  is  that  one  is 
responsibly  free  when  he  can  "do  as  he  has  a 
mind  to."  The  State  is  not  immediately  (however 
ultimately)  considering  his  originality,  in  declaring 
his  responsibility  to  its  own  policy ;  in  a  round-about 
way  it  does  wisely  assume  the  mental  cultivation  of 
the  citizen;  but  the  immediate  congenital  quality  of 
the  creature,  from  the  viewpoint  of  its  puted  Creator, 
can  hardly  involve  responsibility. 

The  psychology  of  this  predicament  has  been 
rather  vaguely  exploited.  Doubtless  there  was  al- 
ways recognized  (or  at  least  since  our  "civilization") 
something  determined  in  the  natural  make-up  of 
the  individual  man.  Socrates,  for  example,  argued 
earnestly  that  virtue  cannot  be  taught.  But  it 
was  mainly  subsequent  to  the  observations  of  Gall 
and  Spurzheim  that  physiological  structure,  either 
brute  or  human,  was  held  to  determine,  in  all  but 
very  exceptional  cases,  the  mental  and  moral  quali- 
ties of  the  individual.  Ethical  and  religious  ob- 
jections have  of  course  been  raised  against  the 
theory,  and  Emerson  even  resented  it,  but  intelligent 
people  generally  now  admit  its  main  contentions  so 
far,  that  the  frontal  brain  is  efficient  intellectually, 
the  top  and  back  brain  morally,  and  the  side  brain 
more  or  less  aesthetically.  This  is  so  taught  in  the 
common  schools. 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  187 

Various  mechanical  bearings  and  compensations 
seem  to  rationalize  the  consciousness  and  disposition 
as  naturally  resulting  from  peculiarities  of  physical 
organization.  In  Scripture,  the  creature  thinks  "as 
he  is,"  and  as  if  necessarily  so.  The  long  fibre  of 
the  hound  must  render  him  sensitive,  apprehensive 
and  timid,  while  the  compact  bull-dog,  with  his  teeth 
in  advance  of  his  nose,  threatening  execution  before 
judgment,  is  sudden  and  quick  in  quarrel. 

Such  considerations  should  repress  the  flippancy 
of  this  "having  a  mind  to."  Mind  is  not  so  cheap 
a  commodity;  and  the  will  is  not  quite  amenable  to 
one's  ideals.  No  doubt,  one  could  have  the  courage 
of  Ney  or  Decatur  if  he  had  a  mind  to,  in  the  right 
sense;  or  he  might  go  up  as  climbs  the  steeple- jack, 
and  standing  on  the  cross,  wave  his  cap  to  the 
thrilled  and  apprehensive  crowd  below;  but  the 
average  man  in  the  same  position  would  feel  his  hair 
turning  gray  at  the  roots ;  his  heart  would  fail  him, 
and  inconsequent  and  dangerous  fancies  might  come 
to  him. 

The  very  place  puts  toys  of  desperation, 
Without  more  motive,  into  every  brain 
That  looks  so  many  fathoms  to  the  sea 
And  hears  it  roar. 

Even  our  common  honesty  is  amenable  to  the 
clearness  of  our  natural  memory  and  perceptions. 
Plato  suggested  the  difference  of  the  rogue  and  the 
honest  man  as  largely  mathematical. 

The  freedom  of  will  and  consciousness  requires  a 
delicate  appreciation  when  it  involves  relations  of 
the  divine  and  the  human,  and  especially,  for  us 


188  PLURIVERSE 

here,  as  implicating  the  doctrines  of  Jesus  concern- 
ing it,  for  these  afford  little  of  favorable  counte- 
nance to  the  current  notions  of  free  will,  especially 
as  affecting  human  responsibility  and  retribution. 
He  was  the  first  to  so  emphasize  the  divine  guidance 
and  government  as  to  invest  it  in  the  business  and 
bosom  of  humanity  as  a  working  thought  of  daily 
life,  for  its  own  sake  and  hereafter. 

There  seems  to  have  been  but  little  really  scien- 
tific reflection  upon  the  intimate  relation  of  our  puted 
originality  to  the  Power  that  is  our  ultimate  refer- 
ence, or  upon  the  infrequency  of  our  consideration 
of  it,  although  for  the  greater  part  of  the  tune  we 
are  involuntarily  using  it,  and  are  inspired  and 
guided  by  it.  From  the  causative  viewpoint  one 
hardly  need  pay  any  attention  to  himself,  whether 
thinking  or  acting.  One  should  be  curious,  even  if 
not  astonished,  that,  while  he  is  giving  attention  to 
the  fact,  he  draws  his  every  breath  voluntarily,  yet 
his  breathing  goes  on  quite  as  regularly  "of  itself" ; 
and  also  the  fact  that  his  thoughts  and  words  come 
from  sources  of  which  he  knows  nothing,  and  whose 
current  he  can  only  with  special  effort  control,  and 
whose  persistence  he  would  often  repress.  Give  the 
clever  thinker  a  patent  for  a  device  that  would  stop 
one's  thinking,  he  need  never  again  work  for  wages. 

Experts  have  differed  almost  diametrically  upon 
the  wonderful  duplexity  of  what  we  call  personality, 
especially  as  involving  divine  and  human  nature. 
To  the  egoist,  personality  is  original:  "the  highest, 
steepest  thought,"  said  Hegel.  Emerson  would  look 
no  higher  than  the  canon  of  Kant  —  the  cultured 
consciousness  —  and  to  this  our  personality  is  a 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  189 

wavering  and  inconstant  attachment,  never  quite 
identical  with  our  more  essential  being.  Indeed  he 
would  regard  "genius"  as  subservience  of  the  former 
to  the  latter,  as  "  the  virtue  of  a  pipe  is  to  be  hollow 
and  smooth."  "We  aspire  and  look  up,"  said  he,  "and 
put  ourselves  in  an  attitude  of  attention,  but  from 
some  alien  energy  the  visions  come."  Even  so  held 
St.  Augustine,  Goethe,  and  many  others.  The 
thoughtful  man,  even  with  no  regard  to  the  consola- 
tion of  Jesus,  must  find  in  this  reflection  the  most  inti- 
mate solace  for  his  follies  and  his  sins.  It  is  his  best 
and  least  costly  reverence,  the  belief  that  he  is  the 
instrument  of  a  higher  power. 

The  adjustment  of  the  citizen's  inspired  action  to 
the  requirements  of  national  and  social  government 
was  a  problem  which  more  than  transiently  con- 
cerned Jesus.  He  recognized  a  discrepancy  in  civil 
duties  being  excused  by  loyalty  to  divine  commands. 
Though  it  needs  be,  in  the  divine  scheme,  that 
offences  come,  the  state  criminal  shall  suffer  punish- 
ment —  shall  render  unto  Caesar  the  tribute  due  to 
his  function  and  vocation. 

The  Pharisees  demanded  of  Him  a  reconciliation 
of  his  gospel  of  mercy  with  the  punishment  exacted 
by  the  Mosaic  law.  The  case  must  bear  citation: 

"Jesus  went  unto  the  Mount  of  Olives.  And  early 
in  the  morning  he  came  again  into  the  temple,  and 
all  the  people  came  unto  him,  and  he  sat  down  and 
taught  them. 

"And  the  scribes  and  pharisees  brought  unto  him 
a  woman  taken  in  adultery;  and  when  they  set  her 
in  the  midst  they  say  unto  him,  'Master,  this  woman 
was  taken  in  adultery,  in  the  very  act.  Now  Moses 


190  PLURIVERSE 

in  the  law  commanded  us  that  such  should  be  stoned ; 
but  what  sajest  thou?' 

"This  they  said  tempting  him,  that  they  might 
have,  to  accuse  him.  But  Jesus  stooped  down,  and 
with  his  finger  wrote  in  the  dust.  So  when  they  con- 
tinued asking  him  he  lifted  up  himself  and  said 
unto  them,  'He  that  is  without  sin  among  you,  let 
him  first  cast  a  stone  at  her.'  And  again  he  stooped 
down  and  wrote  in  the  dust. 

"And  they  who  heard  it,  being  convicted  in  their 
own  conscience,  went  out  one  by  one,  beginning  at 
the  eldest,  even  unto  the  last;  and  Jesus  was  lefr 
alone,  with  the  woman  standing  in  the  midst. 

"When  Jesus  had  lifted  up  himself,  and  saw  none 
but  the  woman,  he  said  unto  her,  'Woman,  where  are 
those  thine  accusers?  hath  no  man  condemned  thee?' 

"She  said,  'No  man,  lord.' 

"And  Jesus  said  unto  her,  'Neither  do  I  condemn 
thee.  Go,  and  sin  no  more.' ' 

(How  far  this  seems  from  the  "jealous  God,  visit- 
ing the  iniquities  of  the  fathers  upon  their  children 
even  unto  the  third  and  fourth  generation !") 

It  is  theoretically  impossible  to  pervert  this  epi- 
sode to  an  exceptional  case.  The  sin  charged,  the 
overt  commission,  the  concurrent  testimony,  the  un- 
questioned law  and  the  prevalent  custom,  all  confirm 
it  as  a  recognition  of  the  divine  viewpoint,  as  to  the 
responsibility  of  the  creature  to  the  Creator  whose 
work  shall  be  manifest  in  him.  The  pertinence  and 
motive  of  the  legend  can  obtain  only  in  the  divine 
purpose  of  the  gospel  to  relieve  the  human  conscience 
of  any  responsibility  to  the  inspiring  Power  whose 
behest  it  powerlessly  fulfills.  There  can  be  no  vi- 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  191 

carious  or  compensatory  forgiveness  of  moral  derelic- 
tion; the  secondary  orginality  which  burdens  the 
human  conscience  must  be  relieved,  not  by  any  sacri- 
ficial readjustment,  but  by  a  wiping  out  of  the  record 
in  the  act  of  the  divine  Disposer  as  taking  the  bur- 
den and  its  responsibility  upon  himself,  and  setting 
the  "sinner"  free.  [See  Eucken  to  this  same  effect.] 

Our  discussion  should  have  thrown  some  light 
upon  the  recalcitrance  of  Jesus  against  Jewish  law 
in  this  instance.  Our  theologians,  in  their  "plan  of 
salvation,"  seem  to  still  regard  him  as  a  sacrifice  for 
the  remission  of  our  sins,  not  considering  that  only 
a  truth  can  relieve  the  spirit.  The  central  truth 
of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  is  that  of  himself  the  creature 
can  do  nothing;  that  God  is  rather  a  father  than 
a  governor,  but  more  than  either  he  is  for  his 
own  purpose  the  inner  and  inspiring  life  and  light, 
without  which  not  even  a  sparrow  falls  to  the 
ground. 

However  the  creature  may  seem  to  himself  original 
and  responsible,  the  true  light  shows  his  power  to  be 
but  secondary  from  the  divine  viewpoint,  and  the  re- 
mission of  his  sins  is  possible  only  in  the  truth  that 
the  Divine  assumes  responsibility  for  them.  Let  one 
know  that  the  follies  he  has  committed  are  circum- 
stantial, and  not  congenital  in  his  proper  stuff  — 
that  his  shame  and  remorse  are  not  ultimately  attrib- 
utable to  him,  but  rather  to  the  divine  purpose,  his 
conscience  may  drop  the  ball  and  chain ;  for  the  truth 
and  the  light  will  have  set  him  free. 

That  Jesus  conceived  of  himself  as  historically  and 
generically  singular  in  the  fact  of  this  annunciation, 
its  previous  repression  may  well  have  persuaded  him. 


192  PLURIVERSE 

The  personal  psychology  of  the  Master  is  as  obscure 
as  was  his  social  environment.  The  Grecian  culture 
of  400  years  before  must  still  have  glimmered 
through  the  regime  of  the  Csesars.  Pontius  Pilate 
was  obviously  a  philosophical  scholar.  His  chance 
question,  partly  to  the  crude  Judean  agitators, 
"What  is  truth?"  is,  barring  the  proem  to  the 
gospel  according  to  St.  John,  the  most  important 
metaphysical  expression  in  the  New  Testament ;  and 
the  announcement  of  Jesus,  "I  am  the  truth,"  is  the 
only  plausible  retort  to  that  unanswerable  question 
—  since  really  truth  is  impossible.  As  to  what  Jesus 
knew  of  the  world's  inconsequent  philosophy,  no  ex- 
acting occasion  appears  to  have  shown.  His  re- 
sponses were  ever  timely  and  pragmatical,  as  fitted 
to  his  audience.  A  discussion  with  Pilate  would  have 
been  in  bad  form.  A  logomachist  or  a  professional 
sophist  might  well  have  regarded  this  as  an  eminently 
fortunate  opportunity;  but  a  fine  genius,  possibly 
entranced  by  an  auto-suggestion  of  uniquity,  could 
but  stand  for  and  live  the  only  feasible  answer  to 
the  Roman's  fling. 

Our  more  immediate  interest  in  Jesus  lies  in  the 
metaphysical  weight  of  his  emphasis  upon  what  we 
regard  as  the  philosophical  fact,  that  personality 
can  bear  but  a  part  of  the  burden  of  explanation. 
That  the  surd  should  be  absolute  is  an  extravagant 
conjecture.  Idealism  will  have  at  least  this  admis- 
sion, that  the  Mystery,  even  as  ultimate,  must  be 
known  to  be  such:  there  shall  be  knowledge  or 
nothing.  The  problem  was  still  for  him,  as  it  must 
be  for  all  thought,  that  however  humbly  he  denied 
himself,  however  utterly  he  submerged  his  original- 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  193 

ity  in  him  in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being  —  a  relation  transcendently  more  intimate 
than  that  of  father  and  son,  or  of  principal  and 
agent,  or  of  ruler  and  subject  —  he  had  yet  to  con- 
strue, in  his  homiletic,  a  duplexity  in  his  ostensible 
unity  with  the  Father.  The  dialectic  controversy 
which  the  succeeding  ages  have  realized  was  immi- 
nent and  unavoidable.  But  we  should  observe,  as  of 
the  utmost  philosophical  importance,  that  in  his 
treatment  of  this  occult  relation  he  credited  to  hu- 
manity no  more  of  "free  agency"  than  a  personal 
individuality  as  such  must  socially  infer.  The 
Csesar  is  enthroned  in  the  material  world;  and  life, 
with  all  the  antagonism  and  self-seeking  by  which 
vitality  accrues,  is  for  divine  purposes  divided  among 
the  many ;  but  the  private  aspiration  of  the  individ- 
ual, and  his  prayer  to  the  paternal  Power  which 
shall  exploit  these  individual  antagonisms,  recognizes 
as  little  as  possible  of  the  separateness  between  the 
secular  magistrate  and  the  subject  of  his  official 
jurisdiction.  The  Lord's  Prayer  at  once  pleads 
and  deprecates  the  fact  that  it  is  addressed  to  the 
very  source  of  its  own  inspiration  —  to  that  which 
both  prompts  and  enables  the  petitioner  "to 
will  and  to  do."  It  voices  the  helpless  anxiety 
of  a  supplicant  to  the  Power  which  alone  can 
furnish  the  disposition  which  it  demands,  yet  to 
which  it  acknowledges  indisputable  responsibility. 
Our  interest  in  the  complication  is  not  so  much  in 
the  sinner's  psychological  illusion  of  freedom  as  it 
is  in  the  philosophical  testimony  against  his  original 
competence. 

Matthew   vi,    9:     "Your    Father    knoweth    what 


194  PLURIVERSE 

things  ye  have  need  of  before  ye  ask  him.  After  this 
manner  therefore  pray  ye : 

"Our  Father,  who  art  in  Leaven,  Hallowed  be  thy 
name.  Thy  kingdom  come.  Thy  will  be  done  in 
earth  as  it  is  in  heaven.  Give  us  this  day  our  daily 
bread.  And  forgive  our  debts,  as  we  forgive  our 
debtors.  And  lead  us  not  into  temptation,  but  de- 
liver us  from  evil.  For  thine  is  the  kingdom,  and  the 
power,  and  the  glory,  for  ever.  Amen." 

There  can  be  no  consistent  interpretation  of  these 
sentences  other  than  that  all  power  and  disposition 
are  of  God.  How  utterly  impertinent  were  the  ad- 
juration, "Lead  us  not  into  temptation,"  in  any 
other  understanding  than  that  all  guidance  and  in- 
spiration are  of  God!  —  Yet  we  have  it  from  St. 
James :  "Let  no  many  say,  when  he  is  tempted,  'I  am 
tempted  of  God'  ;  for  God  is  not  tempted  of  any, 
neither  tempteth  he  any  man."  This  protest,  how- 
ever, came  from  the  vulgar  consciousness,  "under 
the  law,"  and  lacked  the  refinement  and  second-sight 
of  Jesus  and  St.  John.  The  New  Testament  will  go 
for  nothing  if  such  contradictions  shall  be  allowed  to 
outface  its  esoteric  spirit. 

This  doctrine  of  St.  James  was  the  voice  of  that 
"categorical  imperative"  for  which  Kant,  in  the  in- 
terest of  Prussian  orthodoxy,  imperiled  his  philoso- 
phical reputation,  refusing  to  consider  that  all  ex- 
altation of  the  power  of  the  creature  implies  an 
equal  derogation  from  that  of  the  Creator  —  a 
dividing  of  the  house  against  itself. 

The  title  of  Jesus,  whether  as  the  Son  of  Man  or 
the  Son  of  God,  was  questioned  as  exhaustively  dur- 
ing his  lifetime  as  it  has  been  since.  He  read  from 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  195 

"the  law"  an  ascription  of  godship  that  left  it  quite 
other  than  unique;  "to  some  gave  he  power  to  be- 
come sons  of  God" ;  and  our  advanced  criticism  has 
been  quick  to  quote  the  precedent,  and  has  so  plaus- 
ibly barricaded  the  human  position,  made  it  so  dan- 
gerous, aesthetically,  to  attack  it,  that  its  discussion 
is  socially  regarded  as  bad  form ;  we  hear,  occasion- 
ally, that  "religion  out  of  church  is  sacrilege."  In 
fact  the  policy  of  the  Church  has  always  deprecated 
even  the  possession  of  the  Scriptures  in  unclerical 
hands. 

Protestant  faith,  for  all  its  monism,  is  embar- 
rassed by  a  too  dull  appreciation  of  the  unique  ele- 
ment in  nature.  There  needs  no  more  than  common 
sense  to  admit  that  no  one  miracle  should  be  more 
astounding  than  another,  nor  than  the  whole.  A 
man  rising  from  the  grave,  having  a  body  already, 
is  not  half  the  miracle  of  a  bird  perfecting  in  an 
egg,  with  only  an  impersonal  heat  to  promote  its 
development.  That  a  man  was  born  of  a  virgin 
is  as  nothing  to  the  fact  that  one  was  ever  born  at 
all.  This  wonder,  like  every  other  accomplishment 
of  nature,  is  but  a  question  of  historical  evidence, 
in  which  every  incident,  microscopically  criticised, 
is  in  some  particular  unique.  The  miracle  of  a 
local  fact  fades  in  its  cosmic  background.  One  may 
readily  class  himself  as  a  cad  and  a  menial  by  truc- 
ulently presuming  upon  Nature  as  intending  con- 
sistency and  law.  The  cataclysms  of  history,  the 
wandering  aerolites  which  have  struck  us,  the  frus- 
trations of  promise  and  the  impossibility  of  final 
purpose,  all  give  warning  that  our  lesson  is  not  of 
law,  but  rather  of  exceptionality  and  unreason.  On 


196  PLURIVERSE 

the  other  hand,  the  wildest  abnormity  may  recur  in 
its  cycle,  and  prove  no  miracle  as  such. 

There  appears  a  confusion  in  ecclesiastic  affairs, 
obviously  owing  to  neglect  of  the  duplex  vocation  of 
Jesus  as  he  apprehended  and  explicitly  declared  it. 
While  he,  as  a  Jew,  loyally  accepted  the  Messianic 
succession,  and  announced  that  jot  nor  tittle  of  the 
law  should  fail  until  all  should  be  fulfilled  —  that  is 
to  say  that  he  by  vicarious  sacrifice  should  still  sat- 
isfy the  law  of  retribution  as  it  was  written  of  old 

he  categorically  proclaimed  a  new  dispensation,  of 
love  rather  than  of  vengeance,  wherein,  by  the  divine 
resumption  of  all  efficiency,  and  the  renunciation  of 
all  originality  on  the  part  of  the  creature,  the  con- 
viction of  sin  should  be  alleviated,  and  its  burden  of 
responsibility  borne  by  the  Creator.  Our  only 
philosophical  interest  in  the  topic  is,  that  Jesus,  for 
himself  and  for  all  men,  renounced  originality  and 
free  -will,  in  favor  of  divine  omnipotence. 

That  Jesus  was  no  philosopher  —  meaning  that 
his  insight  was  never  blurred  by  dialectic  problems 
—  is  of  course,  from  our  viewpoint,  decisively  in  his 
favor;  but  that  he  was  the  world's  most  profound 
psychologist,  as  having  the  clearest  intuition  of  the 
demands  of  honor  and  conscience,  shall  unquestion- 
ably appear.  For  who  that  has  felt  the  horror  of 
remorse  for  cruelty  to  another  could  assuage  the 
pangs  of  conscience  with  the  thought  that  another, 
more  generous  than  himself,  was  suffering  a  penalty 
that  was  justly  his  own  desert?  "Whip  me,  ye 
devils !"  cried  the  despairing  Moor,  as  he  gazed  upon 
the  evidence  of  his  vengeance  and  superior  strength. 
Could  any  vicarious  suffering  have  relieved  him,  who 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  197 

truly  "was  great  of  heart"?  Not  thus  is  the  for- 
giveness of  sin.  But  if  one  could  have  assured  him 
that  he  had  been  possessed,  that  he  had  been  de- 
mented and  overborne,  "ensnared  soul  and  body"  — 
that  truly  of  himself  he  could  have  done  nothing  — 
he  might  at  length  have  been  free,  in  the  liberty  of 
the  Gospel.  Not  by  expense  of  the  blood  of  bulls 
and  goats  is  salvation,  nor  mainly  by  his  own  blood 
itself  —  "my  word  shall  make  you  free."  The  sin 
is  no  longer  "imputed"  to  the  creature. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  however  —  and  herein  is  one 
secret  of  the  popular  success  of  Christianity  —  that 
the  satisfaction  of  the  "law,"  the  assurance  that 
"Christ  has  died  for  you,"  that  his  blood  cleanseth 
from  all  iniquity,  is  a  postulate  more  appealing  to 
the  average  sinner  than  is  the  metaphysical  assur- 
ance of  an  illusive  sense  of  responsibility.  Prag- 
matic salvation  is  promoted  by  vicarious  substitu- 
tion, and  is  not  over-critical  as  to  method,  so  long 
as  it  gets  results.  The  advice  is  not  infrequent 
among  men  of  approved  sagacity  and  established 
credit:  "Why  trouble  yourself  over  these  insoluble 
however  important  problems?  Better  keep  with  the 
procession,  join  in  the  ordinances,  take  the  safe  side, 
and  countenance  respectability.  The  yoke  is  easy, 
and  the  burden  is  light."  It  is  a  natural  conse- 
quence of  this  pragmatic  objectivity  that  a  thousand 
worshipers  shall  kneel  to  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God, 
where  one  may  bow  to  the  sublime  wisdom  and  good- 
ness of  the  Son  of  Man ;  but  an  appeal  to  the  Court 
of  Common  Pleas  would  show  that  one  judicious 
critic  should  outweigh  a  whole  theatre  of  others, 
and  that,  freed  from  superstition  and  professional 


198  PLURIVERSE 

exploitation,  Christianity  is  the  religion  of  the 
scholar  and  the  gentleman  —  neither  more  nor  less 
for  the  twentieth  century. 

Accustomed  as  we  have  become  to  the  Immanuel 
idea  —  the  concept  of  "God  with  us,"  as  meaning 
the  homogeneity  of  intelligence  —  we  can  but  faintly 
realize  the  weight  of  its  obsession  upon  the  conscious- 
ness which  first  discovered,  or  at  least  the  personal- 
ity that  first  rationally  entertained  it.  Alone 
among  men  whose  civic  necessities  emphasized  their 
responsibility  to  an  objective  environment,  and  who 
had  no  notion  of  an  inner  and  subjective  connection 
with  the  divine  intelligence  or  power,  he  could  hardly 
avoid  the  conviction  of  singularity  in  his  nature  and 
his  mission.  More  portentously,  if  not  even  more 
formidably,  his  distinction  involved  the  Highest ;  and 
we  get  the  hint  that  his  brooding  upon  it  grew  into  a 
temptation  to  thaumaturgically  test  its  significance : 
Could  he  convert  stones  into  bread?  Could  he  cast 
himself  from  a  precipice  in  safety?  Could  he  go 
forth  into  the  world  and  achieve  wealth  and  political 
power?  Whatever  confidence  the  experiment  did  in- 
spire was  held  in  check  by  his  recognition  of  an 
ancient  Scripture :  "Thou  shalt  not  tempt  the  Lord, 
thy  God."  This  quotation  obviously  was  not  wholly 
a  retort  upon  the  devil,  but  also  a  reminder  to  him- 
self. 

The  astute  critic  will  date  from  this  temptation 
and  its  lesson,  whatever  that  lesson  may  have  been, 
the  seemingly  uncalled  for  and  otherwise  unaccount- 
able persistence  of  Jesus  in  designating  himself  as 
the  Son  of  Man,  and  in  even  homiletically  defending 
that  title  as  in  itself  a  sufficient  renouncement  of  that 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  199 

other  title,  the  "Son  of  God,"  whose  virtual  syno- 
nymity he  could  not  trust  his  enemies  to  understand.1 
Had  he  deigned  to  renounce  his  own  singulartiy  and 
join  the  rabble  as  one  wholly  of  their  caste,  he  might 
possibly  have  escaped  as  effectually  as  did  his  dis- 
ciples, of  whom  not  one  appeared  at  his  trial.  Evi- 
dently he  had  no  faith  in  the  ability  of  his  adherents 
to  treat  the  topic  of  divine  Sonship ;  and  on  several 
occasions  he  admonished  them  to  "tell  no  man  this 
thing." 

There  appears  in  the  record  a  special  anxiety  of 
Jesus  to  forestall  any  accusation  of  his  presumption 
to  the  Highest,  however  difficult  his  doctrine  might 
render  a  due  discrimination  between  the  titles  of  Son 
of  Man  and  Son  of  God.  Obviously  in  the  mind  of 
Jesus  there  was  for  him  no  difference  between  them, 
whether  or  not  all  men,  at  their  best,  might  be 
equally  entitled;  but  the  extraordinary  significance 
then  first  apparent  in  his  claim  was  a  constant  em- 
barrassment to  his  discourse,  seeming  to  demand  of 
him  a  habitual  classification  of  himself  with  his  fel- 
low-men. I  count  in  the  New  Testament  seventy- 
two  instances  of  his  adoption  of  the  designedly 
apologetic  or  deprecative  title  of  the  Son  of  Man, 
while  in  but  two  instances,  and  these  of  very  ques- 
tionable literary  probability,  is  he  quoted  as  identi- 
fying himself  generically  and  exceptionally  with 
God.  On  the  other  hand,  he  reproached  his  disciples 
continually,  in  that  only  a  lack  of  faith  deferred 
their  accomplishment  from  equality  with  his  own. 

i  This  consideration  is  strongly  urged  in  "Christ's  Secret 
Doctrine,"  an  essay  by  H.  S.  Mories,  published  by  James 
McKelvie  and  Sons,  Ltd.,  Greenock,  Scotland. 


200  PLURIVERSE 

It  was  the  profundity  of  his  doctrine,  not  the  over- 
presumption  of  his  individual  supremacy,  that  cost 
him  his  life. 

This  shall  give  no  offense,  our  saying  that  Jesus 
was  not  a  philosopher.  His  sense  of  explanation 
had  attained  only  to  God.  The  humblest  Galilean 
had  as  much  theology  as  had  he,  and  could  not 
have  learned  from  him  that  he  had  traced  the  logi- 
cal mystery  to  any  higher  source  than  the  child 
finds  in  the  father  by  a  faith  which  forestalls  all 
speculation  —  the  same  faith  which  Fichte  came  to 
substitute  for  impossible  knowledge. 

And  who  but  he  has  left  in  the  human  record  any 
food  for  the  imagination  that  could  picture  the 
divine  man?  Who  but  he,  in  all  history,  has 
divinely  posed,  or  said  unto  his  fellow-man,  face  to 
face,  Look  into  my  eyes  and  see  all  of  God  that  shall 
be  seen  at  any  time? 

"Philip  saith  unto  him,  Lord,  show  us  the  Father, 
and  it  sufficeth  us.  Jesus  saith  unto  him,  Have  I 
been  so  long  with  you,  and  yet  hast  thou  not  known 
me,  Philip?  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the 
Father;  and  how  sayest  thou  then,  Show  us  the 
Father  ?  Believest  thou  not  that  I  am  in  the  Father, 
and  the  Father  in  me?  The  words  that  I  speak  unto 
thee  I  speak  not  of  myself;  but  the  Father  that  in- 
hereth  in  me,  he  doeth  the  works.  Believe  me,  that 
I  am  in  the  Father,  and  the  Father  in  me;  or  else 
believe  me  for  the  very  works'  sake.  Verily,  verily 
I  say  unto  you,  He  that  believeth  in  me,  the  works 
that  I  do  shall  he  do  also;  and  greater  works  than 
these  shall  he  do,  because  I  go  unto  my  Father." 

Surely  here  spoke  the  Son  of  Man,  with  no  un- 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  201 

due  pretension  above  his  fellow-man,  if  so  be  the 
latter  would  rise  to  a  right  faith  in  their  common 
nature. 

Obviously  there  should  be  a  reopening  of  this 
cause  —  the  charge  of  blasphemy  as  against  Jesus, 
accused  of  posing  as  "the  Son  of  God"  —  and  a 
modern  reporter  should  be  assigned  upon  the  case. 
It  is  true  that  the  testimony  was  technically  incon- 
sistent, but  an  unbiased  judge  should  perceive  in 
the  discrepancy  of  the  evidence  a  warrant  against 
any  collusion  or  conspiracy  of  the  witnesses,  and 
find  rather  an  assurance  of  occurrence  so  extraor- 
dinary as  to  provoke  different  intepretations,  as 
well  as  to  impart  even  discordant  impressions.  Not 
in  all  history  have  complications  so  intricate,  in- 
volving property  interests  so  extensive,  come  to 
rest  in  mere  possession  upon  such  unsettled  premises, 
and  under  such  conflicting  titles.  These  material 
properties  and  perquisites  are  likely  to  hold  the 
churches  asunder  long  after  the  average  culture  shall 
have  accepted  Jesus  under  his  own  oft-reiterated 
title  of  the  Son  of  Man  —  par  excellence. 

It  seems  long  until  the  race  can  adjust  the  per- 
sonal equation,  rather  by  lifting  up  its  own  dignity 
than  by  dragging  Jesus  down. 

Finally  —  and  frankly  and  modernly  —  we  have 
no  immediate  vocation  to  either  account  for  or  con- 
ciliate the  popular  prestige  of  Christianity.  For 
people  of  mature  convictions  certain  of  its  manifest 
discrepancies  are  swiftly  righting  of  themselves,  in 
ways  which  a  boastful  approval  would  only  check 
and  embarrass.  It  may  be  safely  granted  to  "mod- 
ernity" that  the  personality  of  Jesus  is  liable  to  ex- 


202  PLURIVERSE 

aggeration  through  the  mist  of  distance  and  the 
crudity  of  his  record,  and  that,  born  into  our  science 
and  culture,  his  life  and  doctrine  would  have  been 
differently  interpreted  —  and  it  was  false  interpre- 
tation that  destroyed  him.  But  as  against  all  skep- 
ticism of  the  unique  in  history,  and  in  scientific  and 
secular  assurance  of  the  faith  in  him  that  is  so 
largely  and  devoutly  cherished,  we  must  hold  it  as 
not  a  syllable  too  much  to  say  —  and  we  challenge 
philosophical  contention  of  the  saying  —  that  there 
is  no  other  name  given  under  heaven  among  men,  as 
of  one  through  whose  truth  the  race  can  either  for- 
give or  be  forgiven  for  its  sins,  than  the  name  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

Said  Goethe:  "Life,  no  less  than  scientific  investi- 
gation, is  confined  within  impassable  barriers.  All 
man's  activity  rests  upon  a  given  natural  order ;  his 
work  can  only  succeed  when  it  strikes  out  in  the 
direction  prescribed  by  nature;  it  becomes  empty 
and  artificial  if  it  tries  to  sever  its  connections  or 
to  act  in  opposition  to  nature.  'Let  man  turn 
whither  he  will,  undertake  no  matter  what ;  he  will 
ever  come  back  again  to  that  path  which  nature  has 
mapped  out  for  him.' ' 

Said  Emerson:  "The  ardors  of  piety  agree  at 
last  with  the  coldest  skepticism,  that  nothing  is  of 
us  or  our  works  —  that  all  is  of  God.  Nature  will 
not  spare  us  the  smallest  leaf  of  laurel.  All  writ- 
ing comes  by  the  grace  of  God,  and  all  doing  and 
having.  I  would  gladly  be  moral,  and  keep  due  metes 
and  bounds,  which  I  dearly  love,  and  allow  the  most 
to  the  will  of  man ;  but  I  have  set  my  heart  on  hon- 
esty in  this  chapter,  and  I  can  see  nothing  at  last,  in 


JESUS  AND  FREE  WILL  203 

success  or  failure,  than  more  or  less  of  vital  force 
supplied  by  the  Eternal." 

Said  Spinoza:  "There  is  no  bad,  to  God  .  .  . 
to  him  there  is  no  'free  will.'  " 

Said  St.  Augustine:  "What  is  done  by  thee  is 
done  by  God  working  in  thee."  .  .  .  "Whatever 
he  does  or  leaves  undone,  man  can  alter  nothing ;  his 
role  in  life  is  minutely  prescribed  for  him." 

Said  Eucken:  "He  who  will  not  begin  with  won- 
der and  admiration  will  never  find  entrance  to  the 
Holy  of  Holies.  For  his  discoveries,  his  syntheses, 
his  happy  inspirations,  the  artist  has  to  thank  not 
his  own  reflections  but  a  Supreme  Power." 

Said  Eckhart:  "All  error  and  depravity  come 
from  God's  creatures  presuming  to  be  or  do  some- 
thing on  their  own  account." 

If  we  aspired  to  an  apothegm,  it  would  be  that 
freedom,  originality,  and  reason  as  in  equation  with 
the  Mystery,  shall  be  the  last  hopes  of  mortal  ex- 
planation. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  ANESTHETIC  REVELATION 

I  HAVE  made  the  preceding  digest  of  current  phil- 
osophy in  the  hope  of  familiarizing  its  mental 
spectres,  and  of  authenticating  if  not  justifying 
the  halting  discomfiture  of  even  the  most  cultured 
patients  of  the  anaesthetic  revelation.  If  I  have 
rightly  indicated  the  obstacles  and  pitfalls  which 
disrupt  the  course  of  satisfactory  explanation,  and 
have  sufficiently  emphasized  the  confessed  failures 
of  philosophical  endeavor,  the  reader  should  foresee 
that  the  seemingly  promising  rubric,  "Anaesthetic 
Revelation,"  may  forecast  rather  unutterable  Mys- 
tery than  satisfaction,  although  our  better  insight 
of  the  dialectic  shifts,  and  the  more  familiar  use  of 
the  logical  conventions,  may  clear,  to  some  extent, 
the  mental  area  in  which  the  Mystery  is  encountered. 

Our  hope  is  not  so  much  to  philosophize  the  Mys- 
tery as  it  is  to  signalize  in  it  an  unequivocal  impasse 
whose  obstruction  can  be  neither  obviated  nor  de- 
fined—  if  the  confusion  of  philosophy  may  attest 
the  fact. 

The  illumination,  or  the  obsession,  which  has 
prompted  this  treatise,  will  have  rarely  arrested  the 
attention  of  the  boor  or  the  bigot ;  but  for  the  world- 
wise  it  will  determine  as  his  ultimate  and  only  pos- 
sible insight  of  the  genius  of  being  and  the  secret  of 

204 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    205 

the  world.  Any  essay  upon  the  anaesthetic  (or 
presumptively  any  other)  revelation,  as  proposing 
a  detail  of  what  it  is  or  is  like,  is  immediately  baffled 
by  the  consideration  that  its  topic  is  and  must  be 
unique.  It  has  no  class,  no  relation  to  any  com- 
parable fact  or  theory  whatsoever.  Its  best  remem- 
bered impression  is  the  sense  of  initiation,  as  into  the 
immemorial,  the  inevitable,  the  time-out-of-mind,  the 
something  of  fate  or  destiny  which,  in  even  justice, 
at  least  for  once  every  sane  consciousness  should 
realize. 

All  analogies  anticipate  the  concession  that  the 
unique  cannot  be  articulate.  Nor  does  the  revela- 
tion require  for  its  reception,  however  it  may  for  its 
entertainment,  the  thoughts  of  language,  wherein 
man  excels  the  beasts  of  the  field.  One  may  be  ad- 
vised of  a  handicap  which  the  lack  of  conventional 
language  imposes  upon  a  dumb  intelligence,  poten- 
tially as  apprehensive,  possibly,  as  his  own. 

An  English  dictionary,  with  its  2,000  pages,  car- 
ries some  350,000  different  words,  of  whose  meanings 
the  average  citizen  may  know  one  tenth.  Our 
Indians,  of  the  time  of  Columbus,  may  have  had  200 
words,  among  which  were  a  few  adjectives,  but  no 
sign  of  an  abstraction.  Conceive  then  the  utter 
latency  —  saying  nothing  of  the  potentiality  —  in 
the  Indian  mind,  of  such  meanings  as  memory,  ob- 
jectivity, veracity,  heredity,  and  ten  thousand  of  the 
like,  which  were  wholly  beyond  his  faculty  of  expres- 
sion, or  even  of  focalization  in  his  attention. 
Under  strong  emotion  he  could  merely  contort  his 
habitually  immobile  visage,  or  gesticulate  in  rude 
imitation,  while  his  heart  might  be  voluble  of  an 


206  PLURIVERSE 

inarticulate  and  helpless  meaning.  He  could  not 
know,  he  could  not  connectedly  think,  he  could  not 
be  said  to  feel  the  meanings  which  only  culture  could 
educate  up  to  sane  and  conventional  expression,  even 
to  himself.  Yet  the  basis  for  all  this  exploitation 
was  within  him,  his  birthright  as  a  monad  and  a 
soul ;  he  was  not  a  stock  or  a  stone,  but  counted  as 
one  in  the  spirit  world,  where  even  the  beast  is  open 
to  some  revelation  which  in  the  instant  shall  carry, 
however  cryptically,  the  hint  of  initiation  —  the  hint 
that  Now  You  KNOW. 

I  have  wondered  at  psychology  and  "natural  his- 
tory," that  they  have  nowhere  noticed  or  identified 
what  has  been  long  known  to  me  as  the  voice  of  the 
blood.  They  should  have  heeded  the  injunction,  to 
"search  the  Scriptures."  For  centuries  ago,  when 
there  were  cattle  upon  a  thousand  hills,  and  the 
patriarchs  dwelt  in  tents,  and  had  no  abattoirs  for 
slaughtering  purposes,  they  bled  the  stalled  ox  and 
the  fatted  calf  in  the  open  field,  and  the  blood  sank 
directly  into  the  grassy  ground,  where  it  must  have 
frequently  occasioned  the  metaphysical  phenomenon 
which  I  have  mentioned  as  the  voice  of  the  blood,  so 
impressively  quoted  in  Genesis,  in  these  words : 

"And  the  Lord  said  unto  Cain,  Where  is  Abel,  thy 
brother?  And  he  said,  I  know  not.  Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper?  —  And  he  said,  What  hast  thou 
done?  the  voice  of  thy  brother's  blood  crieth  unto 
me  from  the  ground." 

The  dwellers  in  cities  may  live  and  die  with  no 
pathetic  suggestion  from  this  incident,  they  regard- 
ing its  language  as  merely  poetic  and  symbolical; 
but  it  undoubtedly  grew  out  of  a  peculiarity  well 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    207 

known  to  every  plainsman,  and  which  shall  have  been 
observed,  however  carelessly,  by  many  a  farmer's 
boy  —  a  peculiarity  of  the  following  character : 
Where  the  blood  of  an  animal  has  been  freshly  shed 
upon  the  ground  —  particularly,  in  my  own  ex- 
perience, the  blood  of  an  ox,  or  of  a  cow  or  a  calf  — 
any  other  member  of  the  herd  passing  over  the  fatal 
spot  will  be  arrested  and  entranced,  seemingly  by 
some  exhalation  from  the  vital  fluid.  The  animal 
stares,  with  a  rapt  and  distracted  expression,  moan- 
ing and  pawing  the  ground,  as  if  in  fierce  remon- 
strance, though  apparently  "more  in  sorrow  than  in 
anger."  This  abstraction  may  last  for  several  sec- 
onds ;  but  any  noise  or  intrusion  which  would  ordi- 
narily call  attention  will  break  the  spell,  which,  as 
in  the  case  of  "bearing  pain,"  seems  to  be  instantly 
gone  and  forgotten.  Having  had  largely  to  do  with 
flocks  and  herds  I  have  witnessed  this  wonder  many 
times;  but  after  all  our  Psychical  Research  I  have 
never  seen  it  in  secular  print. 

I  cannot  make  less  of  this  phenomenon  than  a 
revelation,  addressed  to  some  atavism  of  the  bovine 
race,  wherein  it  is  as  susceptible  of  the  genius  of 
being  as  man  himself  has  proved  it.  Of  what  cata- 
clysm in  the  history  of  the  creature's  species  may  not 
this  trance  afford  a  reminiscence.  The  animal  has 
no  formal  or  consecutive  thought,  probably,  but 
neither,  so  far  as  I  have  gathered,  has  the  anaesthetic 
patient,  save  as  an  informal  memory  that  baffles  rec- 
ollection. 

One  may  ponder  long  the  manifest  elements  of 
animal  mentality,  as  transcending  the  passive  recep- 
tivity of  native  instinct  —  considering  not  only  how 


208  PLURIVERSE 

much  the  dumb  creatures  may  be  taught,  but  how 
many  aesthetic  traits  they  show,  in  the  vanity  of 
play  and  imitation  and  rivalry,  and  how  deep  and 
lasting  their  affections  are  —  before  he  will  attain 
any  clear  conception  of  the  metaphysical  possibili- 
ties of  this  animal  trance,  or  reverie,  or  illumination, 
or  whatever  it  may  be  called  —  learn,  for  instance, 
if  it  has  any  imagination,  any  hint  of  palingenesis, 
or  metempsychosis,  or  any  scintil  of  a  past,  or  of 
being  itself,  or  fate.  Very  probably  it  is  the  crea- 
ture's supreme  moment,  his  nearest  relation  to  what 
we  think  of  as  spiritual  life.  And  it  is  so  pro- 
nounced, so  wholly  unique  in  scientific  metaphysics, 
that  I  have  come  to  regard  it  as  the  monad's  most 
palpable  connection  with  an  unseen  world. 

There  are  various  other  instinctual  obsessions  or 
possessions  which  lend  a  superstitious  atmosphere 
to  animal  life.  A  cow,  when  she  leaves  her  calf 
resting  while  she  roams  in  pursuit  of  her  own  forage, 
seems  to  have  left  a  spell  upon  it  that  holds  it  mo- 
tionless against  her  return.  It  will  not  leave  the 
spot  save  for  some  extraordinary  and  threatening 
intrusion;  but  if  really  driven  by  some  compelling 
apprehension  to  escape,  it  will  run  as  for  its  life,  and 
recall  the  mother  with  frantic  and  pitiful  appeals. 

So  a  brooding  hen,  however  timid  has  been  her 
previous  habits,  is  so  inspired  by  a  courage  and 
loyalty  to  her  eggs  —  which  must  not  be  allowed  to 
cool  —  that  she  will  not  budge  for  man  or  beast. 
We  may  easily  generalize  these  instances  as  provi- 
sions of  nature,  and  so  forth,  but  they  have  a  mys- 
tical appeal. 

There  is  another  supreme  instant,  often  noticed 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   209 

of  the  dying  patient  —  a  stare  of  seeming  recogni- 
tion, as  of  some  wonderful  import,  just  before  but 
distinctly  not  inclusive  with  the  "setting"  of  the 
eyes.  We  should  consent  that  the  meanest  creature 
ever  favored  with  this  miracle  of  consciousness,  this 
flower  of  all  evolution,  may  well  be  given,  at  least  for 
once,  a  glimpse  of  history,  or  some  abnormal  reality. 

And  here,  again,  the  most  astute  and  critical  may 
need  warning,  against  any  skeptical  and  peremp- 
tory demand  upon  the  mystic,  as  to  what  he  knows 
or  sees.  This  what  gives  the  skeptic  away,  in  his 
naive  presumption  that  the  world-mystery  can  be  of 
a  class,  and  so  comparable  and  definable.  But  the 
basis  of  all  metaphysical  insight  is  the  primary  fact 
that  being  is  unique.  Until  one  can  identify  this 
logical  necessity  he  is  not  of  the  illuminati,  although 
he  may  be  wearing  the  broadest  horns  of  the  herd. 
He  should  see  that  this  import  cannot  be  writ  on  any 
scroll;  he  must  have  the  background  of  its  mean- 
ing in  himself  —  if  indeed  he  ever  may,  after  our 
hopeless  account,  or  discount  of  self-relation. 
Nevertheless,  although  we  may  not  profane  the  one 
mystery  as  a  topic  among  others,  it  seems  possible 
that  we  should  rise  to  it  at  our  best,  and  learn  that 
it  is  a  mystery  only  because  we  are  living  on  a  plane 
below  our  best,  while  its  higher  sanity  is  still  within 
the  homogeneity  of  an  intelligence  which  transcends 
the  portals  of  formal  enunciation. 

It  were  manifestly  absurd,  claiming  a  "revelation" 
not  amenable  to  intelligence;  but  if  we  may  under- 
stand Socrates'  proof  that  Meno's  slave  had  latent 
geometry  in  his  mind,  or  believe  that  a  proud  and 
sulky  Indian  may  be  chafing  under  the  pressure  of 


210  PLURIVERSE 

abstractions  so  easily  connoted  by  us,  the  reader  may 
at  least  "believe  in"  a  revelation  unique  and  manage- 
able, and  withheld  from  popular  appreciation  not 
only,  but  instantly  unthinkable  by  the  most  pro- 
found of  mental  experts.  The  latter  will  claim, 
under  his  modern  lights  (which  reveal  below  the 
"threshold")  that  he  may  live  the  secret  although  he 
has  not  yet  language  in  which  to  formulate  it,  and  so 
hold  the  world  to  the  rule  of  reason,  pound  for  pound. 
But  it  is  peculiarly  this  flippant  and  chipper  ration- 
ality and  "matter  of  course"  that  the  revelation  em- 
barrasses and  disconcerts.  Here  is  no  static  ac- 
countable equation,  but  rather  a  constant  excess, 
and  a  going  on  simply  because  it  is  going  on,  in 
which  the  natural  endeavor  to  account  for  itself 
proves  to  be  of  a  piece  with  and  continuing  the  same 
stuff  that  it  is  meant  to  account  for.  Strong  in  the 
revelation  is  this  sense  of  an  inevitable  going  on  "be- 
cause of"  the  curious  interest  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
going  on,  helplessly  and  fatedly  going  on,  with  a 
sense  of  immemorial  initiation  into  the  truth  that 
this  is  the  inevitable  and  eternal  world-condition, 
and  however  piquant  or  unique,  as  what  inevitably 
and  of  course  must  be,  and  ever  must  have  been. 
There  never  was  a  time  that  did  not  recognize  the 
presumption  of  time  and  the  push  of  its  own  neces- 
sity, and  also  that  any  question  of  its  motive  was 
itself  a  sufficient  reason  at  once  for  its  continuance 
and  for  its  precedence,  but  with  no  relation  to  a 
beginning.  This  is  what  stultifies  the  argument  for 
cause:  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  a  beginning, 
and  therefore  no  place  in  which  to  locate  a  cause. 
Above  all,  it  is  a  revelation  of  the  one  truth  that 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    211 

is  supremely  "worth  while,"  but  baffled  of  content  by 
the  too-evident  fatuity  of  turning  upon  itself  to 
achieve  a  self -relation  —  a  real  self -consciousness, 
in  which  concept  and  percept  should  unite  in  a 
whole  cognition. 

It  is  fairly  presumptive  that  thought,  newly 
wrought  to  its  highest  tension,  should  revert  with 
curious  interest  to  its  remembered  experience  (or 
its  self)  and  be  baffled  in  its  attempts  at  instant 
self-relation,  while  realizing  at  the  same  time  that 
the  effort  of  understanding  is  itself  continuing  (and 
in  a  certain  sense  accounting  for)  the  very  activity 
which  arrests  its  attention  —  affording  a  presump- 
tion from  the  past  as  enforcing  time's  continuance. 

With  this  sense  of  an  effort  of  the  soul  to  turn 
upon  itself  for  an  escaping  and  unachievable  self- 
knowledge,  the  anaesthetic  insight  attests  the  only 
presumable  or  possible  first  principle  of  thought 
and  being,  namely,  fact,  philosophy,  explanation, 
"cause"  —  all  this  curiosity  and  discontent,  is  to 
get  before  the  fact,  to  surround  and  comprehend  the 
fact  of  consciousness;  and  it  discovers  at  last  that, 
in  a  process  of  factual  thought  beginning  is  impos- 
sible, and  hence  fact  is  a  foregone  conclusion,  or 
necessary  presumption ;  and  since  here  is  everywhere, 
comprehension  is  inconceivable  save  as  in  this  vain 
and  continuous  obsession  of  self -relation,  which  keeps 
the  Hound  of  Heaven  on  his  own  trail. 

"The  wonderful  thing  is  fact ,"  said  Carlyle.  The 
gritty  Scot  was  very  near  to  the  mystic  sanity. 
And  all  through  German  philosophy  crops  out  this 
desperate  and  illogical  finality  of  fact,  in  such  say- 
ings as  "it  is  because  it  is"  —  using  the  given  fact 


212  PLURIVERSE 

of  knowledge  (or  of  process)  as  the  "cause"  of  it, 
and  as  objectively  before  it  —  whereas  (as  I  have 
laboriously  sought  to  show)  the  cause  is  subjectively 
and  miraculously  given  as  the  first  of  facts,  and  fact 
(not  cause)  is  the  prime  reality  of  being  as  experi- 
ence —  the  given  percept  which  must  ground  all  con- 
ception. 

Now  if  this  necessary  analysis  were  all  —  this 
secular  Kantian  thought,  which  thousands  of  intro- 
spective people  have  revolved  as  the  puzzle  and  crux 
of  philosophy  —  our  "revelation"  would  be  none 
such!  But  the  immemorial  atavism,  the  sense  of 
initiation,  the  voice  of  the  blood,  the  unique  assur- 
ance that  it  is  a  revelation  of  the  historical  and 
inevitable  and  the  time  out  of  mind  —  all  this  ad- 
monishes the  philosophical  parasite  that  he  is  not 
here  as  a  cosmopolitan  critic  of  worlds,  with  a  vo- 
cation to  put  this  being  in  its  class,  but  rather  that 
there  is  but  this;  and  that,  for  his  once  and  all, 
he  knows  reality.  It  was  a  strong  saying  of 
William  James:  "He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let 
him  hear:  for  me  the  living  sense  of  reality  comes 
only  in  the  artificial-mystic  state  of  mind." 

It  should  be  obvious  that  a  generalization  of  such 
an  experience  —  involving  as  it  must  all  the  ancil- 
lary shadings  of  the  present  tense  —  would  have  to 
be  told  in  tentative  and  provisional  and  poetical 
rather  than  factual  terms.  Continuous  but  revert- 
ing, sure  and  yet  questioning,  at  once  real,  reminis- 
cent and  expectant,  the  genius  of  it  might  well 
regard  sardonically  any  attempt  at  its  factual  ex- 
pression. 

We  are  not  to  infer  that  the  status  of  the  world 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   213 

is  necessarily  weakened  or  undermined  by  this  inter- 
pretation of  it  as  a  mystery  to  us  and  our  philoso- 
phy. The  spirit  still  transcends.  There  is  no 
finite  consciousness  or  conviction  that  should  fore- 
stall the  cosmic  afterthought  of  our  parasital  and 
secondary  nature,  or  authoritatively  declare  the  surd 
ultimate  in  itself.  We  might  say  that  for  one  as 
great  as  the  world  the  world  could  be  reasonable; 
but  if  we  have  any  faith  in  our  own  judgment  there 
is  no  such  one,  nor  any  such  world.  The  cosmos 
itself  is  no  unit,  but  rather  an  egotistic  fetich,  which 
the  multiverse  shall  dissipate  and  overwhelm. 

A  proof  that  the  revelation  is  homogeneous  with 
intelligence  at  its  best  tension  is,  that  it  rarely  fol- 
lows recovery  from  the  major  operations  which  have 
required  prolonged  anaesthesia,  and  which  have 
doubtless  benumbed  the  reflective  faculties  of  the 
patient.  It  attends  rather  the  "coming  to"  from 
a  trance  of  but  a  few  moments'  duration,  when 
presumably  the  mental  faculties  are  still  fresh,  al- 
though under  abnormal  exhilaration.  It  is  of  com- 
mon knowledge  that  we  think  faster  and  more  com- 
prehensively at  some  times  than  we  do  or  can  at 
others. 

That  eminent  psychologist,  William  James,  was 
specially  insistent  —  particularly  in  view  of  the 
notorious  trances  of  Lord  Tennyson  —  that  any 
revelation,  however  occult,  must  still  be  sane,  and 
that  there  can  be  no  other  than  the  homogeneous 
intelligence.  While  he  was  apt  enough  to  agree  that 
knowledge  is  unaccountable  and  insoluble,  he  could 
not  consent  that  a  really  false  knowledge  might  be 
imposed  upon  intelligence  as  such;  he  "felt"  that 


214  PLURIVERSE 

hypothesis  to  be  contradictory,  however  deeply  the 
"unknown  root"  might  be  buried. 

Of  course,  feeling  can  be  no  arbiter  of  contradic- 
tion; and  "the  prime  fact  of  knowledge,"  as  Prof. 
Ladd  calls  it,  cannot  be  proved  or  authenticated; 
we  cannot  double-think,  as  Fichte  assumed  to  do,  in 
his  doctrine  of  consciousness  as  transcending  mere 
sense  by  a  "knowing  that  you  know."  Kant  firmly 
settled  the  ultimate  authority  as  to  knowledge  — 
the  canon  and  last  word  of  human  reason  and  cer- 
tainty —  in  the  plain  "I  think"  —  of  course,  of  the 
cultivated  man.  For  there  is  a  plenty  of  error  and 
illusion,  which  he  would  not  consent  to  call  false 
thinking,  but  rather  would  stoutly  hold  to  be  not 
thinking  at  all  —  he  having  himself  determined  the 
only  sure  method  of  thought. 

Emerson,  on  the  other  hand,  would  seem  to  have 
favored  the  more  intuitive  confidence  of  Prof.  James. 
He  said :  "We  know  truth  when  we  see  it,  as  we  know, 
when  we  are  awake,  that  we  are  awake."  But  this 
is  rather  high  morality  than  astute  metaphysics. 
("Truth"  is  explicitly  the  condemnation  of  knowl- 
edge ;  it  is  a  quality  of  resemblance,  not  of  identity, 
which  last  is  the  only  reality  of  possession.  Knowl- 
edge cannot  realize  the  life  of  that  which  it  in  fact 
is  not.  Truth  is  a  false  pretence  of  the  representa- 
tion of  an  originality  which  does  not  appear  in  its 
portrait.  In  other  words,  the  truth  of  a  mere  — 
t.  e.  pretended  —  re-presentation  would  disqualify 
the  original,  as  being  no  more  essential  than  is  a 
copy.) 

However,  the  same  self-reliance  appears  in  the 
consciousness  of  Tennyson,  as  shown  in  an  anecdote 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    215 

which  has  been  extensively  published,  as  related  by 
John  Tyndall: 

Tennyson  and  Tyndall  had  been  in  consultation 
with  "Master"  Jowett,  of  Balliol  College,  and  Tyn- 
dall relates  that  after  the  Master  had  retired  the 
poet  resumed  the  previous  discussion,  which  had  in- 
volved his  peculiar  trances,  and  had  provoked  cer- 
tain rather  cavalier  suggestions  by  the  eminent 
translator  of  Plato  as  to  their  possible  illusion. 
According  to  Tyndall's  account,  Tennyson  imme- 
diately retorted  upon  the  animadversions  of  his  late 
guest  with  the  utmost  seriousness  and  (for  him  at 
least)  extraordinary  heat.  He  said:  "By  God 
Almighty,  there  is  no  illusion  in  the  matter!  It  is 
no  nebulous  ecstasy,  no  confused  state,  but  a  con- 
dition of  transcendent  wonder  associated  with  ab- 
solute clearness  of  mind." 

This  striking  expression  —  the  very  ideal  of  what 
one  must  think  the  announcement  of  a  "mystery" 
should  be  —  comports  perfectly  with  the  definition 
which  the  poet  vouchsafed  to  me  in  1874,  and  which, 
with  his  implied  permission,  was  widely  published  at 
that  time.  I  quote  partially  this  letter : 

"Faringford,  Freshwater,  Isle  of  Wight, 

May  7,  1874. 

"SiR :  —  I  have  to  thank  you  for  your  essay.  .  .   . 
"It  is  a  very  notable  sketch  of  metaphysic,  end- 
ing yet  once  more,  apparently,  in  the  strange  history 
of  human  thought,  with  the  placid  Buddha,  as  veri- 
fied by  nineteenth  century  anaesthetics. 

" Although  I  have  a  gleam  of  Kant,  I  have  never 
turned  a  page  of  Hegel  —  all  that  I  know  of  him 


216  PLURIVERSE 

having  come  to  me  obiter,  and  obscurely  through  the 
talk  of  others;  nor  have  I  ever  rigorously  delivered 
myself  to  dialectics. 

"I  have  never  had  any  revelations  through  anaes- 
thetics, but  a  kind  of  waking  trance  —  this  for  lack 
of  a  better  word  —  I  have  frequently  had,  quite  up 
from  boyhood,  when  I  have  been  all  alone.  This  has 
come  upon  me  through  repeating  my  own  name  to 
myself  silently,  till  all  at  once,  as  it  were  out  of 
the  intensity  of  the  consciousness  of  individuality, 
individuality  itself  seemed  to  dissolve  and  fade  away 
into  boundless  being,  and  this  not  a  confused  state 
but  the  clearest,  the  surest  of  the  surest,  utterly  be- 
yond words  —  where  death  was  an  almost  laugh- 
able impossibility  —  the  loss  of  personality  (if  so 
it  were)  seeming  no  extinction,  but  the  only  true 
life. 

"I  am  ashamed  of  my  feeble  description.  Have  I 
not  said  the  state  is  utterly  beyond  words?  But  in 
a  moment  when  I  come  back  to  my  normal  condition 
of  'sanity'  I  am  ready  to  fight  for  'meine  liebes  ich,' 
and  to  hold  that  it  will  last  for  aeons  of  seons." 

On  page  158  of  Vol.  2,  of  the  "Tennyson  Mem- 
oirs," is  given  a  previous  draft  of  this  letter,  found 
among  the  laureate's  papers.  The  first  paragraph 
is  nearly  identical  with  the  first  of  this ;  but  the  latter 
part  runs  to  an  account  of  Tennyson's  only  occasion 
of  being  subjected  to  anaesthetic  treatment  and  this 
for  a  surgical  operation.  He  wrote:  "The  friend 
who  held  my  hand  and  supplied  the  handkerchief, 
told  me  that  first  of  all"  (after  he  came  to)  "I  blurted 
out  a  long  metaphysical  term  which  he  could  not  re- 
word for  me." 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    217 

Had  Tennyson  repeated  the  experience  he  would 
have  recalled  this  expression. 

In  1880,  Sir  William,  then  Professor,  Ramsay, 
conducted  certain  experiments  upon  himself,  with 
anaesthetic  agents,  chiefly  ether,  the  results  of  which 
experience,  and  others  of  later  date,  appeared  in  the 
Journal  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  of 
1893-4. 

In  opening  the  topic  Prof.  Ramsay  says  (in  view 
of  the  fact  that  the  various  anaesthetics  afford  vari- 
ous kinds  of  mental  effect  upon  different  persons)  : 
"On  me  all  anaesthetics  produce  the  same  mental 
state  .  .  .  they  all  produce  the  same  curious  de- 
lusion." He  had  a  kind  of  culture  in  his  process, 
which  in  the  early  stages  was  oriented  by  natural 
preconceptions  and  habits  of  thought;  but  these, 
ever  recurring  at  first,  came  gradually  to  be  sup- 
pressed and  ignored,  as  he  settled  into  one  clear  and 
permanent  insight,  until  at  last  he  ceased  to  observe 
them.  Of  this  permanent  insight  he  says:  "An 
overwhelming  impression  forced  itself  upon  me  that 
me  state  in  which  I  then  was,  was  reality;  that  now  I 
had  reached  the  true  solution  of  the  secret  of  the 
universe,  in  understanding  the  secret  of  my  own 
mind;  that  all  outside  objects  were  merely  passing 
reflections  on  the  eternal  mirror  of  my  mind  — 
something  quite  trivial  and  transitory.  The  main 
and  impressive  fact  for  me  was  that  /  was  self-exist- 
ent, and  that  time  and  space  were  illusions.  This 
was  the  real  ego,  on  whose  surface  ripples  of  incident 
arose,  to  fade  and  vanish  like  the  waves  on  a 
pond.  .  .  .  Any  remark  (of  others)  wearied  me 


218  PLURIVERSE 

because  I  had  heard  it  so  often  before;  I  conceived 
a  low  opinion  of  the  being  who  could  pass  his  life  in 
saying  such  a  trivial  and  unimportant  thing,  and 
I  disdained  to  answer.  ...  I  not  merely  knew 
that  it  had  happened  before,  but  that  I  could  have 
predicted  that  it  would  happen  at  that  particular 
moment." 

He  speaks:  "Absurdly  self-conscious  all  through 
—  every  little  event  so  signal  and  important  as 
eternally  the  item  for  this  particular  instant.  I 
swallow  —  important  .  .  .  this  is  a  stage  in  the 
cycle  of  the  universe  (all  events  led  up  to  this).  .  . 
Each  time  I  am  under  the  influence  of  an  anaesthetic 
I  am  able  to  penetrate  a  little  further  into  the  un- 
fathomable mystery.  The  recognition  of  past  stages 
does  much  to  render  the  path  familiar."  (All  this  is 
soliliquy,  recorded  by  his  secretary.) 

"I  do  not  think  that  I  am  a  follower  of  Bishop 
Berkeley  in  my  ordinary  everyday  existence;  my 
tendency  of  mind  is  by  training  and  by  the  nature 
of  my  daily  avocations,  to  suspend  judgment  —  a 
condition  of  scientific  skepticism.  But  under  the 
influence  of  an  anaesthetic  all  doubts  vanish;  I  know 
the  truth  of  Berkeley's  theory  of  existence  —  that 
all  fellow  creatures  are  products  of  my  consciousness, 
and  that  although  they  may  be  real  to  themselves, 
and  have  each  a  world  of  his  own,  to  me  they  are 
only  parts  of  my  thoughts,  and  moreover  not  very 
important  elements  in  the  chain  of  my  life. 

"But  the  feelings  evoked  are  disappointing.  It 
is  not  satisfying  to  realize  that  the  goal  of  the  uni- 
verse is  of  this  nature.  The  circumstances  are  so 
trivial  as  to  make  it  painful  to  believe  that  this  is 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    219 

the  scheme  of  nature ;  that  'that  far  off  divine  event 
to  which  the  whole  creation  moves'  should  have  in 
its  progress  no  higher  deeds,  and  for  its  outcome 
no  nobler  aim  than  I  am  then  conscious  of." 

(Observe  here  how  this  scientist  has  then  forgot- 
ten, in  the  primordial  secret  as  it  is  for  all,  the 
world  of  later  man's  achievements  —  the  wonders  of 
astronomy  and  politics  and  religion  and  art.) 

"My  feelings  are  sometimes  those  of  despair  at 
finding  the  secret  of  existence  so  little  worthy  of 
regard.  It  is  as  if  the  veil  that  hides  whence  we 
come,  what  we  are,  and  what  will  become  of  us,  were 
suddenly  rent,  and  as  if  a  glimpse  of  the  Absolute 
burst  upon  us.  The  conviction  of  its  truth  is  over- 
whelming, but  it  is  painful  in  the  extreme.  I  have 
exclaimed  —  'Good  heavens!  is  this  all?'  Such  im- 
pressions, exceedingly  difficult  to  express  in  words, 
pass  off  gradually.  After  five  minutes  they  begin 
to  fade  in  intensity ;  the  conviction  of  their  absolute 
truth  is  less  deep-seated;  that  there  exists  an  ordi- 
nary workaday  world,  in  which  I  and  innumerable 
others  play  our  parts,  is  again  realized,  and  in  ten 
minutes  or  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the  state  of  mind  is 
again  perfectly  normal.  There  is  no  after  impres- 
sion, and  my  nerves  are  as  steady  as  usual." 

(It  is  to  be  remembered  that  these  impressions  are 
not  crescent  in  anaesthesia  as  such,  but  occur  as  the 
effect  is  passing  off.  In  his  experiments  Prof.  Ram- 
say kept  renewing  the  dose  at  intervals  of  from  one 
or  two  up  to  fifteen  minutes  and  then  reporting.) 

Prof.  Ramsay  furnished  in  his  account  certain 
notes  taken  by  his  secretary,  giving  some  of  his 
exclamations  at  different  stages  of  his  anaesthesia, 


220  PLURIVERSE 

of  which  I  copy  a  few.     Observe  that  "the  universe" 
is  his  constant  burthen: 

"Everything  has  recurred  before  —  sense  of  hav- 
ing been  here  before  .  .  .  the  table,  mantel,  etc., 
having  been  always  there.  .  .  .  This  one  little 
piece  of  enormous  coherence  of  universe  —  utterly 
ridiculous  in  its  smallness.  .  .  .  Every  bit  of 
these  events  recurred;  cycle  of  events  recurring 
bothers  me  greatly,  because  I  expect  each  stage 
to  go  further  —  that  is,  stage  in  evolution  of 
the  universe.  This  is  the  scheme  of  the  universe  and 
my  being  here,  but  I  never  before  reached  the  point 
of  having  taken  ether  before.  I  will  stop  short  and 
explain  (here  he  was  nearly  in  his  normal  state  of 
mind) :  In  the  ordinary  workaday  world  this  is 
an  untenable  theory  —  I  mean  the  sense  of  'myself 
alone'  —  of  what  affects  me  —  there  is  a  sense  of 
precisely  similar  events.  I  believe,  as  far  as  I  can 
comprehend,  that  this  is  the  universe.  Here  I  have 
recognized  the  ultimate  scheme  (genius?)  of  the  uni- 
verse as  far  as  I  am  concerned  up  to  a  certain  stage. 
It  will  probably  be  worked  out  when  I  die.  Yet 
that  is  not  the  end  —  I  shall  go  on  after  that,  but 
to  what?"  (Resumes  the  ether.)  "Oh,  by  Jove! 
Yes,  I  know :  After  all  it  comes  to  this :  It  is  one 
or  the  other  theory  of  the  universe,  and  mine  must 
be  the  most  probable  —  mine  or  somebody  else's. 
Well,  I  may  be  the  central  person  in  the  universe  — 
I  don't  mind  —  I  can't  help  it.  ...  Have  I  been 
unconscious  for  a  considerable  time?  By  Jove!  if 
one  only  knew  the  whole  thing.  This  may  be  the 
truth;  it  is  my  own  view,  and  deserves  to  be  known. 
.  .  .  People  choose  to  imagine  that  there  are 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    221 

worlds  —  that  is  to  say,  build  mental  cosmogonies. 
Of  course  it  is  an  open  question,  whether  other 
people  have  existence  as  well  as  one's  self.  By  some 
chance  I  am  picked  out  for  the  central  purpose  of 
the  universe.  In  this  state  of  mind  quarrels  and 
reconciliations,  woes  and  fears,  are  no  longer  the 
chief  things  of  the  universe,  but  one  asks,  where  does 
it  come  from?  what  is  it  all  for  —  which  is  the 
normal,  which  is  the  abnormal  state  of  affairs? 
When  I  come  back  to  my  sane  consciousness  I  hold 
the  ether  state  to  be  abnormal,  and  vice  versa.  Of 
course  this  is  utterly  absurd  in  ordinary  life.  Now 
I  am  sane  again  —  but  under  ether  there  is  only  me." 
Sir  William  then  recalls  a  work  by  Sir  H.  Davy 
on  nitrous  oxide,  published  in  1800,  at  the  end  of 
which  is  an  account  of  a  symposium  of  twenty-nine 
persons  who  took  the  gas  with  varying  effects,  of 
which  he  (Sir  William)  recognized  chiefly  those  upon 
Sir  Humphrey  himself.  He  quotes  Davy  as  fol- 
lows: "As  I  recovered  my  former  state  of  mind  I 
felt  an  inclination  to  communicate  the  discoveries  I 
had  made  during  the  experiment.  I  endeavored  to 
recall  the  ideas ;  they  were  feeble  and  indistinct.  One 
collection  of  terms,  however,  presented  itself,  and 
with  the  most  intense  belief  and  prophetic  manner 
I  exclaimed  to  Dr.  Kinglake,  'Nothing  exists  but 
thoughts!  The  universe  (sic)  is  composed  of  im- 
pressions, ideas,  pleasures  and  pains.' "  Sir  Wil- 
liam adds :  "It  is  curious  that  this,  with  Davy,  was 
an  isolated  occurrence  —  with  me  it  was  a  perma- 
nent impression."  It  should  be  remembered,  in  this 
regard,  that  Sir  Humphrey  was  probably  the  first 
to  discover  this  effect  of  modern  anaesthetics. 


222  PLURIVERSE 

At  the  conclusion  of  his  paper  Sir  William  offers 
the  following  reflections : 

"It  is  somewhat  startling  to  be  confronted  with 
an  unexpected  condition  of  one's  own  mind.  The 
saying  'in  vino  veritas*  is,  I  suppose,  intended  to 
imply  that  an  intoxicated  person  will  blurt  out  the 
truth ;  but  the  intoxication  of  anaesthetics  forces  me, 
while  in  that  condition,  to  believe  that  what  I  think 
is  true.  The  theory  attributed  to  Bishop  Berkeley 
is  a  perfectly  consistent  one,  and  can  be  disputed 
only  on  grounds  of  what  we  call  'common  sense.'  I 
do  not,  in  my  ordinary  state  of  mind,  attribute  any 
importance  to  this  theory,  beyond  regarding  it  as  a 
somewhat  improbable,  but  incontrovertible  specula- 
tion; but  I  confess  that,  since  my  experience  with 
anaesthetics,  I  am  disposed  to  regard  it  as  worthy 
of  a  little  more  consideration  than  it  usually  receives. 
The  difficulty  in  accepting  it  is  our  practically  abso- 
lute certainty  of  the  existence  of  our  fellow  crea- 
tures ;  and  the  deduction  that  if  A  and  B  receive  the 
same  impression  at  the  same  time,  that  impression 
must  be  caused  by  some  thing,  external  to  both. 
But  in  my  anaesthetic  state  this  objection  presents 
no  difficulty  to  me;  I  conceive  each  ego  (monad?) 
to  have  its  orbit,  and  to  stand  absolutely  alone, 
conscious  of  but  uninterfered  with  by  the  other 
egos." 

(Observe  that  this  is  his  inference,  and  not  his 
insight  —  which  was  of  himself  as  the  only  centre.) 

"To  choose  a  crude  illustration:  two  mirrors  re- 
flect, but  do  not  influence  each  other  in  any  mechani- 
cal or  material  sense.  The  recollection,  which 
remains  after  return  to  the  ordinary  state  of  mind, 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   223 

of  having  had  such  Berkeleyan  views,  is,  perhaps 
naturally,  not  without  some  influence  on  the  normal 
mind,  and,  as  I  have  said,  it  appears  to  me  not  wholly 
absurd  to  reconsider  the  usual  postulates  of  'com- 
mon sense.'  In  short,  I  am  confronted  under  ether, 
with  what  I  may  term  'recurrent  events.'  It  is 
necessary  to  form  some  theory  which  will  reconcile 
myself  with  this  new  environment ;  and  the  idea  that 
the  universe  centres  itself  in  one  appears  to  me, 
while  in  the  anaesthetized  state,  to  be  a  satisfactory 
one.  The  fact  remains  that,  while  anaesthetized,  my 
belief  in  that  theory  of  existence  which  we  may  call 
for  short  the  Berkeleyan  hypothesis,  is  immeasur- 
ably more  firm  and  decided  than,  in  my  normal  state, 
is  my  belief  in  the  ordinarily  accepted  views  of  mat- 
ter and  motion  which  regulate  the  lives  of  most  hu- 
man beings." 

He  finally  declares  that  in  giving  this  account  he 
has  been  careful  to  exclude  any  intimations  which 
might  otherwise  have  lingered  in  his  mind  as  to  ex- 
periences of  which  he  had  heard  or  read  of  others 
under  anaesthetic  conditions. 

We  may  remark  that  Ramsay's  disappointment 
or  disillusion  is  in  the  fact  that  the  revelation  makes 
so  intensely  secular,  inevitable  and  homely  what  he 
had  before  regarded  as  necessarily  sacred  and  im- 
posing and  foreign. 

The  adumbration  of  Sir  William  Ramsay  on  the 
seeming  inconsequence  of  the  anaesthetic  revelation 
—  such  as  his  protest,  "Is  this  all?"  etc.  —  recurs 
emphatically  in  the  following  letter  addressed  to  me 
in  May,  1911,  from  No.  19  Chester  Terrace,  Re- 
gents Park,  N.  W.  London: 


224  PLURIVERSE 

"Dear  Sir:  —  It  is  interesting  to  find  that  your 
experiences  under  anaesthetics  have  been  similar  to 
mine.  I  fancy  that  a  good  many  people  are  thus 
affected.  I  have  been  at  least  fifty  times.  But  I 
don't  think  there  is  anything  'behind.'  Anyhow,  I 
don't  intend  to  study  it  further,  for  one  gets  no  fur- 
ther by  repetition,  and  I  am  sure  it  is  bad  for  the 
nerves.  "Yours  faithfully, 

"W.  RAMSAY." 

This  phrase,  "anything  behind"  —  doubtless 
meant  to  repress  any  metaphysical  expectations  from 
the  experience  —  has  for  the  philosopher  a  practical 
significance.  There  is  nothing  imminent  in  it  for 
one  whose  outlook  is  expectant  of  a  royal  and  monis- 
tic explanation.  If  any  really  great  intellectual 
achievement  is  to  be  recorded,  I  fancy  it  rather  in 
the  Egyptian  style,  in  which  England  said  to  Pha- 
raoh, "I  will  make  a  man  of  you" : 

It  was  not  a  duke  or  earl,  nor  yet  a  viscount, 
'Twas  not  a  big  brass  general  who  came, 

But  a  man  in  Jchaki  kit,  who  could  handle  men  a  bit, 
And  his  baggage  labeled,  Sergeant   What's  His 
Name. 

Sir  William's  depression  under  the  commonplace 
and  secular  tone  of  the  world-mystery  accords  very 
well  with  our  democratic  multiverse,  which  dispenses 
with  the  brazen  general  Absolute,  and  the  tape-tied 
Infinite,  whose  quasi  prestige  is  that  it  is  unlimited ; 
but  just  therefore  it  has  no  definition,  and  conse- 
quently it  has  no  practical  use.  Perhaps  our 
heavenly  expectations  have  been  too  prodigious  to 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   225 

prove  either  possible  or  just.  Strictly,  we  have 
no  right  to  an  opinion  about  anything.  The  mo- 
ment that  anything  is  classed*  as  "this,"  or  "the," 
it  is  emasculated  of  the  subjective  element,  and  for 
idealism  cannot  be  real. 

About  ten  years  after  the  publication  of  these 
experiences  of  Sir  William  Ramsay  there  was  held 
a  symposium  of  persons  who  had  been  led  by  his  ex- 
ample to  test  the  anaesthetic  vision  for  themselves, 
at  No.  20  Hanover  Square,  London,  June  24,  1904. 
The  gathering  comprised  representatives  of  quite 
distinguished  literary  and  social  eminence,  and  the 
current  discussion  of  the  topic  had  the  advantage 
of  not  only  frank  and  ingenuous  expression  but  of 
scientific  and  historical  criticism.  A  considerable 
number  of  the  associates  related  their  individual  ex- 
periences, which,  however  various  in  seemingly  tem- 
peramental details,  fell  generally  under  the  summing- 
up  of  Mr.  Ernest  Dunbar,  the  lecturer  of  the  eve- 
ning: 

"After  the  first  effects  of  ether  have  passed  off, 
there  comes  a  time  of  profound  intellectual  stimula- 
tion, during  which  the  mind  reasons  with  astonishing 
rapidity,  choosing,  in  some  individuals,  transcenden- 
tal lines,  appearing  to  solve,  once  and  for  all,  the 
mystery  of  the  universe." 

The  hundreds  of  letters  that  came  to  me  after  the 
distribution  of  my  pamphlet  in  1874  gave  a  feeling 
or  sentiment  indited  by  Emerson,  as  if  "all  the 
books  in  the  world  were  written  by  one  man."  An 
expert  knows  the  hand.  Why  do  we  call  a  certain 
class  of  unsophisticated  persons  "naturals"?  The 


226  PLURIVERSE 

charge  carries  nothing  against  them,  either  moral 
or  intellectual,  often  quite  the  contrary,  yet  they 
are  —  simple.  (We  need  not  to  dwell  upon  their 
psychology.)  So  when  we  look  at  a  good  portrait, 
we  know  there  was  an  original  behind  it,  although  we 
may  have  never  seen  the  party  who  sat  for  it:  such 
an  artist  could  not  be  so  depraved  as  to  have  mis- 
represented his  subject.  Even  so  with  these  letters: 
they  all  struggle  with  an  ineluctable  purport  that 
shames  the  best  definition.  I  select  one  that  is 
rather  more  "literary"  than  the  average: 

"I  haven't  got  what  you  would  call  an  intellectual 
memory.  Things  come  to  me  in  flashes  out  of  ex- 
perience, and  pull  me  up  short,  and  I  say  to  myself, 
'Yes,  that's  it  —  that's  it,  I  understand ;  I  see  why 
it  is  so,  and  what  it  means,  and  how  far  it  extends. 
It  is  five  thousand  years  old.  Adam  thought  it  after 
Cain  killed  Abel  —  or  Abel  thought  it,  just  before 
he  died — or  Eve  learned  it  from  Lilith — or  it  struck 
Abraham  when  he  went  to  sacrifice  Isaac.  Some- 
times things  like  that  hit  me  deep,  here  in  the  desert. 
I  can  see  just  over  on  the  horizon  the  tents  of  Moab 
in  the  wilderness.  I  feel  that  yesterday  and  to-day 
are  the  same ;  that  I  have  crossed  the  prairies  of  the 
everlasting  years,  and  played  with  Ishmael  in  the 
wild  hills,  and  fought  with  Ahab;  and  I  feel  that 
time  and  the  world  are  small  affairs.  You  see  how 
it  is :  I  never  was  trained  to  think,  and  I  get  stunned 
by  thoughts  that  strike  me  as  from  right  out  of  the 
centre.  Sometimes  I'd  like  to  write  them  down,  but 
I  can't  write  —  in  fact  I  can't  think.  You'll  know 
how  it  is." 

Is  not  this  fine,  however  tantalized  by  "cacaethes 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   227 

scribendi"?  Here  was  your  poet  of  the  light  that 
fails,  of  the  matter  that  cannot  rise  to  form.  Given 
the  something  born  but  never  made  —  the  something 
that  touched  Isaiah's  hallowed  lips  with  fire  —  this 
fellow  might  have  voiced  the  intelligible  forms  of 
ancient  poets  and  the  fair  humanities  of  old  religion ; 
he  too,  like  the  lost  Keats,  might  have  stood  with 
Ruth  amid  the  alien  corn,  or  with  stout  Cortez  and 
his  men,  silent  upon  a  peak  of  Darien.  He  too  — 
why  not?  might  have  sniffed  the  Paestan  gardens, 
where  the  air  is  sweet  with  violets  running  wild 
through  broken  friezes  and  fallen  capitals : 

Sweet  as  when  Tully,  'writing  down  his  thoughts 
(Turning  to  thee,  divine  Philosophy), 
Sailed  slowly  by,  two  thousand  years  ago. 
For  Athens,  when  a  ship,  if  northeast  winds 
Blew  from  the  Paestan  Gardens,  slacked  her  course. 

The  reader  shall  need  to  consent  to  this  being  of 
genius,  however  at  last  we  fail  of  the  genius  of  being. 
We  have  read,  of  those  explorers  for  the  Pole,  that 
he  who  once  enters  the  Arctic  dream  can  never  recur, 
with  his  former  interest,  to  the  temperate  vocations 
of  his  race;  for  evermore  the  loadstone  draws  him, 
and  evermore  his  fancy  kindles  the  opaline  splendors 
of  the  eternal  ice.  And  it  is  even  so  with  those  who 
have  discarded  the  sensuous  limitation  of  reality,  and 
realized  that  a  comprehension  is  unthinkable;  there 
is  a  wanderlust  of  the  monad  that  is  ever  tangent 
from  the  fabulous  One.  There  is  a  larger  sanity 
and  a  surer  fixity  for  the  far  stars  whose  orbits 
know  no  centre  of  pluriversal  space. 


228  PLURIVERSE 

To  these  experimenters,  whose  besetting  and  baf- 
fling thought  is  ever  of  the  "universe,"  and  again  the 
universe,  we  may  say,  You  are  sane,  although,  so 
far  as  explanation  is  concerned  you  are  using  the 
wrong  words.  For  holding  the  revelation  strictly 
to  the  homogeneity  of  intelligence,  and  as  due  to 
pure  thought  at  its  highest  tension,  the  solipsism 
that  puzzled  Ramsay  and  Tennyson  and  Davy  and 
so  many  others  is  scientific  sanity  at  its  best.  Until 
one  has  realized  that  his  present  thought  is  the  ul- 
timate triumph  of  nature  —  that  all  history  has  led 
up  to  this  —  that  all  the  efficiencies  of  the  universe 
have  resulted  in  this,  and  pre-eminently  in  the  criti- 
cism of  this,  as  the  iris  reflected  from  the  highest 
bubble  on  the  last  wave  of  time,  he  has  not  been 
wholly  and  truly  sane. 

Your  solid  Englishman  or  German  appeals  to  the 
great  world,  and  deems  the  Frenchman  extravagant 
when  he  calls  the  universe  to  witness  his  exploit ;  but 
the  French  spirit  is  of  the  three  the  most  highly 
generalized ;  its  enthusiasm  shows  no  distraction,  how- 
ever averse  to  the  company  of  less  volatile  disposi- 
tions. It  will  rather  stay  at  home  than  emigrate; 
your  Frenchman  belongs  in  France.  He  has  the 
deepest  sense  of  national  solidarity  and  fatality, 
inspiring  a  financial  faith  beyond  that  of  other  na- 
tions. His  national  debt,  which  no  one  cares  to 
have  paid  —  and  why  should  it  be,  if  rightly  in- 
curred? was,  at  the  beginning  of  the  world  war 
some  five  hundred  million  francs  more  than  the  debts 
of  England,  Germany  and  the  United  States  com- 
bined. 

It  shall  not  be  surprising,  then,  if  the  high  tension 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    229 

of  the  Gallic  spirit  appreciates  certain  aesthetic 
values,  among  which  a  blunder  might  be  worse  than 
a  crime,  and  the  angels  of  high  heaven,  who  weep  at 
man's  fantastic  tricks,  should  be  less  grieved  at  the 
exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin  than  they  are  discomfited 
by  the  utter  fatuity  of  foolishness  and  fudge. 

(An  American,  however,  can  hardly  accept  any 
foreigner  as  the  highest  aesthetic  result.  Our  mon- 
grel breed  has  absorbed  and  submerged  all  racial 
peculiarities.  An  American  actor  will  imitate  the 
speech  of  any  alien  people,  but  on  no  foreign  stage 
can  be  heard  any  attempt  to  mimic  plain  United 
States.  This  is  what  Walt  called  "the  tasteless  water 
of  souls.") 

The  following  letter,  characteristic  of  a  large 
class,  was  sent  to  me  through  the  kindness  of  Prof. 
Hodgson  (45  Conduit  St.  Regent  Street,  London, 
January  18,  1883),  he  having  furnished  the  writer 
(Edmund  Gurney,  26  Montpelier  Square,  London, 
S.  W.,)  a  copy  of  my  essay: 

"I  had  this  extraordinary  experience  myself  last 
year,  under  nitrous  oxide,  harmonizing  with  your 
description;  but  the  result  was  almost  ludicrously 
disappointing.  For  half  a  minute  or  more  after  I 
had  'come  to,'  I  was  quite  sure  that  the  problem  was 
solved  and  that  when  I  got  my  breath  I  could  tell 
the  dentist  about  it,  and  that  it  had  something  to 
do  with  time.  When  I  got  my  breath  I  found  that 
I  could  not  get  it  out,  then  and  there;  but  walking 
home  I  meditated  an  article  about  it  in  a  philosophi- 
cal journal.  Somehow  this  conception  dwindled  in 
the  course  of  the  evening,  and  my  plan  reduced  it- 


230  PLURIVERSE 

self  to  a  letter  to  William  James,  which,  however, 
would  (I  felt  sure)  teem  with  interest;  but  when, 
after  a  few  days,  I  sat  about  the  writing  of  the 
letter,  there  was  no  more  to  tell  than  I  have  told 
you." 

Many  patients  who  have  recovered  from  near 
drowning  have  reported  wonderful  reminiscences  of 
their  past  lives.  Probably  the  pressure  of  an  un- 
usual volume  of  blood  distends  the  wrinkled  and 
faded  palimpsests  of  the  brain,  and  freshens  the  field 
of  memory  under  anxious  introspection.  And  doubt- 
less the  exhilaration,  of  which  anaesthesia  seems  to 
be  or  to  follow  an  excess,  is  still  vivifying  the  menta- 
tion of  the  patient  while  he  is  "coming  to."  Nor  is 
it  surprising  that  one  under  high  stimulation  should 
be  lured  to  the  more  poetical  regions  of  his  own 
culture,  which  for  us  are  apt  to  be  in  the  historical 
and  sacred  past,  and  to  savor  of  the  problems  of 
philosophy. 

Dr.  Holmes,  "The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast 
Table,"  etc.,  although  sharing  that  contempt  for 
human  nature  and  its  manifestations  which  charac- 
terises the  medical  profession  —  whose  patrons  are 
mostly  lying  on  their  backs  —  was  yet  thoroughly 
loyal  to  the  ether  revelation  as  a  unique  concernment 
with  the  universe  as  the  Mystery  and  the  Whole,  or 
as  he  oftenest  said,  with  Being.  I  quote  a  reminis- 
cence of  his  conversation  with  Moncure  D.  Conway, 
a  literary  cosmopolite: 

"He  told  me  that  when  ether  was  discovered  he 
had  such  reverence  for  it  that  he  thought  it  might 
possess  some  spiritual  virtue,  and  resolved  to  experi- 
ment on  himself  to  find  if  it  had  any  psychological 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   231 

effect.  He  prepared  the  ether,  and  having  placed 
beside  his  bed  a  small  table,  with  pencil  and  paper 
to  record  his  impressions  on  awakening,  he  lay  down 
and  applied  the  drug.  Sure  enough,  he  presently 
found  himself  just  sufficiently  conscious  to  seize  the 
pencil,  and  with  a  sentiment  of  vast  thought  wrote 
something  down.  It  proved  to  be  these  words:  'A 
strong  scent  of  turpentine  pervades  the  WHOLE.' 

"But  he  was  not  satisfied  with  that,  and  made 
another  effort.  'This  time,'  he  said,  'I  felt  as  I 
wrote  that  I  really  had  seen  the  secret  of  the  universe. 
The  words  proved  to  be,  'Put  Jesus  Christ  into  a 
Brahma  press  and  that's  what  you  will  get.' " 

I  need  hardly  remind  the  serious  reader  that  there 
was  a  humorous  quirk  in  the  fibre  of  Dr.  Holmes, 
that  was  sometimes  prejudicial  to  his  really  fine 
genius.  As  more  to  our  purpose,  and  in  justice  to 
him,  I  will  recall  in  poor  prose  a  poem  of  his,  en- 
titled "The  Parson's  Mare": 

"She  was  a  shambling  nag,  of  unknown  antece- 
dents, that  had  come  to  the  old  clergyman  in  the 
way  of  a  'donation,'  and  at  the  county  fair  the 
neighboring  boys,  for  a  lark,  had  brought  her, 
hitched  to  the  parson's  dilapidated  sulky,  as  an  entry 
on  the  race  track,  a  burlesque  to  the  more  preten- 
tious contestants.  The  managers  humorously  gave 
her  a  place  and  a  start  with  the  rest.  .  .  .  But 
suddenly  there  was  a  surprise;  the  nondescript  was 
forging  to  the  front,  and  actually  setting  the  pace. 
The  experts  were  dumbfounded  at  her.  What,  in 
the  name  of  all  professionalism,  possessed  her? 
Could  they  but  have  looked  within,  and  caught  her 
inspiration,  the  atavism  of  a  long-forgotten  record 


232  PLURIVERSE 

was  relighting  the  vestiges  of  a  great  career ;  it  was 
a  palingenesis  out  of  the  past.  Sometime,  somewhere 
—  maybe  when  the  Assyrian  came  down  like  a  wolf 
on  the  fold  —  maybe  when  the  warhorse  laughed  at 
the  shaking  of  the  spear  —  maybe  while  the  dames 
of  Rome  their  gilded  hair  waved  to  the  wind  —  she 
had  romped  the  stadium  through  victorious  cheers ! 
1 —  She  left  them  all  behind.  The  confusion  was  such 
that  her  time  was  not  taken  (a  shrewd  omission  on 
the  part  of  the  story  teller),  and  having  exhaled  her 
inspiration  she  was  led  halting  back  to  her  stall." 

There  is  an  unpublished  supplement  to  the  story, 
in  which  it  appears  that  the  ill-requited  pastor  had 
an  authentic  record  of  his  shabby  assistant,  that  he 
had  trailed  her  marauders,  and  had  observed  the  de- 
nouement through  a  crack  in  the  fence. 

Had  my  issue,  in  1874,  of  "The  Anaesthetic  Reve- 
lation and  the  Gist  of  Philosophy"  brought  no  other 
responses  than  such  as  I  have  quoted  here,  I  should 
have  despaired  of  the  audience  on  which  the  fate 
of  the  present  essay  may  depend.  There  are  plenty 
of  people  who  have  learned  the  impossibility  of  the 
old-fashioned  "truth"  —  the  false  pretense  of  a  gen- 
uine re-presentation  of  fact  —  and  have  character- 
ized this  as  "a  queer  world"  —  which  helps  its 
psychology  about  as  much  as  does  the  reminiscence 
of  one  who  has  overeaten  of  mince  pie  for  supper, 
and  had  "a  glimpse  of  his  grandmother."  But  there 
are  well-practiced  experts  in  the  mechanism  of 
thought  who  have  clearly  realized  in  this  experience 
the  impasse  which  halts  the  logical  conception  of 
self-knowledge. 

Among  the  cleverest  of  these  I  recall  Xenas  Clark, 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    233 

a  young  philosopher  of  Amherst,  who  died  in  the  '80's, 
much  regretted.  In  connection  with  the  anaesthetic 
revelation  he  is  quoted  by  James,  in  "The  Varieties  of 
Religious  Experience,"  as  follows: 

"It  is  the  one  sole  and  sufficient  insight  why  (or 
not  why,  but  how)  the  present  is  pushed  on  by  the 
past,  and  sucked  forward  by  the  vacuity  of  the 
future.  Its  inevitableness  defeats  all  attempts  at 
stopping  or  accounting  for  it.  It  is  all  precedence 
and  presupposition,  and  questioning  is  in  regard 
to  it  forever  too  late.  It  is  an  initiation  of  the  past. 
The  real  secret  would  be  the  formula  by  which  the 
'now*  keeps  exfoliating  out  of  itself,  yet  never  es- 
capes. What  is  it,  indeed,  that  keeps  existence  ex- 
foliating? The  formal  being  of  anything,  the 
logical  definition  of  it,  is  static.  For  mere  logic 
every  question  contains  its  own  answer  —  we  simply 
fill  the  hole  with  the  dirt  we  dug  out.  Why 
are  twice  two  four?  Because,  in  fact,  four  is 
twice  two.  Thus  logic  finds  in  life  no  pro- 
pulsion, only  a  momentum.  It  goes  because  it  is 
a-going.  But  the  revelation  adds :  it  goes  because  it 
is  and  was  a-going.  You  walk,  as  it  were,  round 
yourself  in  the  revelation.  Ordinary  philosophy  is 
like  a  hound  hunting  his  own  trail.  The  more  he 
hunts  the  farther  he  has  to  go,  and  his  nose  never 
catches  up  with  his  heels,  because  it  is  forever 
ahead  of  them.  So  the  present  is  already  a  fore- 
gone conclusion,  and  I  am  ever  too  late  to  understand 
it.  But  at  the  moment  of  recovery  from  an«esthesis, 
just  then,  before  starting  on  life,  I  catch,  so  to 
speak,  a  glimpse  of  my  heels,  a  glimpse  of  the  eternal 
process  just  in  the  act  of  starting.  The  truth  is 


234  PLURIVERSE 

that  we  travel  on  a  journey  that  was  accomplished 
before  we  set  out ;  and  the  real  end  of  philosophy  is 
accomplished,  not  when  we  arrive  at,  but  when  we 
remain  in,  our  destination  (being  already  there)  — 
which  may  occur  vicariously  in  this  life  when  we 
cease  our  intellectual  questioning.  That  is  why 
there  is  a  smile  upon  the  face  of  the  revelation,  as 
we  view  it.  It  tells  us  that  we  are  forever  half  a 
second  too  late  —  that's  all.  'You  could  kiss  your 
own  lips,  and  have  all  the  fun  to  yourself,'  it  says, 
'if  you  only  knew  the  trick.  It  would  be  perfectly 
easy  if  they  would  just  stay  there  till  you  got  round 
to  them.' 

"The  Anaesthetic  Revelation  is  the  Initiation  of 
Man  into  the  Immemorial  Mystery  of  the  Open 
Secret  of  Being,  revealed  as  the  Inevitable  Vortex  of 
Continuity.  Inevitable  is  the  word.  Its  motive  is 
inherent  —  it  is  what  has  to  be.  It  is  not  for  any 
love  or  hate,  nor  for  joy  nor  sorrow,  nor  good  nor 
ill.  End,  beginning,  or  purpose,  it  knows  not  of. 

"It  affords  no  particular  of  the  multiplicity  and 
variety  of  things;  but  it  fills  appreciation  of  the 
historical  and  the  sacred  with  a  secular  and  inti- 
mately personal  illumination  of  the  nature  and  mo- 
tive of  existence,  which  then  seems  reminiscent  —  as 
if  it  should  have  appeared,  or  shall  yet  appear,  to 
every  participant  thereof. 

"Although  it  is  at  first  startling  in  its  solemnity, 
it  becomes  directly  such  a  matter  of  course  —  so  old- 
fashioned,  and  so  akin  to  proverbs,  that  it  inspires 
exultation  rather  than  fear,  and  a  sense  of  safety, 
as  identified  with  the  aborginal  and  the  universal. 
But  no  words  may  express  the  imposing  certainty 


THE  ANESTHETIC  REVELATION   235 

of  the  patient  that  he  is  realizing  the  primordial, 
Adamic  surprise  of  Life. 

"Repetition  of  the  experience  finds  it  ever  the 
same,  and  as  if  it  could  not  possibly  be  otherwise. 
The  subject  resumes  his  normal  consciousness  only 
to  partially  and  fitfully  remember  its  occurrence, 
and  to  try  to  formulate  its  baffling  import,  with  only 
this  consolatory  afterthought:  that  he  has  known 
the  oldest  truth,  and  that  he  has  done  with  human 
theories  as  to  the  origin,  meaning,  or  destiny  of  the 
race.  He  is  beyond  instruction  in  'spiritual 
things.' " 

If  one  had  casually  asked  in  an  esoteric  circle 
(possibly  antedating  the  incident),  "What  is  the 
anaesthetic  revelation?"  this  rather  ambitious  ver- 
sion of  Clark  would  "stand  him  off,"  at  least  for  the 
moment,  as  the  right  psychology  of  the  experience, 
with  little  or  no  claim  to  any  philosophy  of  it.  As 
for  that,  so  much  depends  upon  one's  viewpoint.  I 
have  just  now  brushed  a  wandering  gnat  from  my 
manuscript,  smearing  the  paper,  and  summarily 
effacing  an  ephemeral  existence.  This  little  citizen 
was  one  of  us ;  yet  the  Congress  will  proceed  with  its 
enactments ;  the  world  war  will  not  be  ostensibly 
affected  by  its  fate.  And  in  a  certain  large  sense 
it  is  not  "considering  too  curiously"  (as  Horatio 
protested)  to  adjust  our  own  parasitic  humility  by 
the  gnat's  unimportance  —  providing  that  we  do  not 
erase  its  cosmic  significance.  For  although  we  and 
our  monuments  and  our  memory  are  doomed  to  thus 
sink  out  of  the  sensuous  reality  of  the  everywhere- 
as-here  ( at  which  event  no  autocratic  One  shall  make 
light  of  our  poor  individuality),  the  fact  may  re- 


236  PLURIVERSE 

main  that  all  centres  are  identical  (though  not  co- 
incident) in  this  illumination,  having  each  a  signifi- 
cant importance  and  a  dignity  that  gets  no  shadow 
from  the  fabulous  and  impossible  Whole:  nay,  rather 
takes  on  a  dynamic  originality  (if  such  may  be) 
wherein  the  monad  may  strike  heroically  about  him, 
for  good  or  ill,  assuming  fearlessly  that  "the  throne 
and  equipage  of  God's  almightiness"  have  no  deeper 
nor  other  realization  than  his  own  —  that  the  pluri- 
verse  is  of  many,  and  that  he  is  at  least  one,  and 
as  good  an  authority  as  are  innumerable  ones. 

It  was  as  aiming  to  reach  this  position  that  I 
arraigned  the  inconsequence  of  philosophy,  having 
long  observed  its  failure  of  any  ultimate  generaliza- 
tion or  comprehension.  And  although  neither  have 
I  achieved  in  thought  any  masterful  conception  of 
the  dream  which  we  inhabit,  I  feel  that  by  eliminat- 
ing the  needless  task  of  impossible  comprehension 
and  beginning,  and  more  determinately  orienting  in- 
ward the  path  of  explanation,  I  have  brought  to 
bear  upon  this  anaesthetic  expression  a  criticism  of 
philosophy  as  the  soul's  endeavor  to  envisage  itself, 
and  to  adjust  itself  to  an  environment  which,  how- 
ever to  be  admonished  of  a  due  humility,  this  insight 
cannot  forego. 

Not  that  I  am  expecting  from  this  orientation  of 
thought  more  determinately  inward  —  as  in  fact  it 
is  modernly  disposed  —  any  clearer  solution  of  the 
classic  problems  of  philosophy.  The  microscope 
and  the  telescope  alike  fail  of  finality  or  ultimate 
limitation;  the  Midst  is  everywhere.  Although  the 
Many  evaporate  and  disenchant  the  mystical  One, 
as  an  outwardly  objective  expectation,  still  the  infin- 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION    237 

itesimal  route  is  as  well  bottomless  as  "the  infinite" 
is  indefinite.  These  are  all  scientific  facts;  and  it 
were  an  idle  and  impudent  esoteric  pretension  that 
the  anaesthetic  insight  affords  a  clearance  of  them. 
If  it  were  a  revelation  in  that  sense  the  reader  might 
fairly  demand  what  it  is,  while  the  proponent  is 
merely  trying  to  indicate  where  it  is  to  be  en- 
countered. There  is  no  pretense  in  our  treatise  of 
philosophising  either  this  or  anything  else. 

That  there  might  have  been  a  world  of  dead  fact 
is  a  supposition  comparatively  easy  to  us ;  but  when 
we  add  to  the  fact  a  knowledge  of  it,  and  are  driven 
by  idealism  and  solipsis  to  assume  that  the  knowl- 
edge, so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  determines  the 
nature  of  the  fact,  there  results  a  convolution  and 
confusion  which  a  modest  citizen  may  confess  him- 
self to  not  quite  understand.  But  that  these  con- 
ditions culminate  abnormally  in  the  anaesthetic  ex- 
perience (still  possibly  as  mere  sanity  at  its  best) 
only  a  negligible  bigotry  should  hereafter  deny. 

It  was  said  of  old,  "the  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the 
beginning  of  wisdom."  I  shall  not  further  arraign 
the  translations  of  the  Vulgate ;  suffice  it  that  in  the 
most  critical  usage  the  word  "fear,"  above,  means  a 
reverent  cognition,  which  can  only  by  implication 
carry  a  punitive  inference.  But  surely,  however  the 
heart  of  the  monad  may  be  coincident  with  the  only 
possible  centre,  and  send  its  pulses  through  the  pose 
of  Ajax  (who  in  our  day  would  need  only  a  rubber 
suit  for  his  defiance  of  the  lightning),  we  must  per- 
ceive that  as  a  transient  visitor  his  role  is  one  of 
humility,  as  in  so  large  a  sense  ancillary  and  depend- 
ent. He  has  ample  ground  for  reverence;  and 


238  PLURIVERSE 

though  he  may  conclude  that  no  personal  one  is 
comprehensively  all-important  or  controlling  in  the 
multiverse  —  and  that  all  notions  of  beginning  and 
cause  are  but  shadows  cast  by  the  rims  of  his  finite 
binoculars  —  it  is  a  transcendent  necessity  of  spirit 
to  declare  and  wonder  at  THIS,  and  to  regard  it  as 
so  far  One,  and  a  wonder  or  miracle  into  which  his 
entrance  is  attended  by  a  sense  of  initiation  as  strong 
and  definite  as  if  some  "all  obliterated  tongue"  had 
warned  him,  in  the  voice  of  a  common  fate,  Now  You 
KNOW! 

Doubtless  there  is  a  Mystery,  but  it  must  not 
stigmatize  reality ;  the  mystery  is  on  our  side  of  the 
fact.  Despite  Schwegler's  "certain  existent  un- 
reason," it  were  the  height  of  presumption  on  our 
part  to  proclaim  the  ultimate  surd.  The  factual 
world  needs  no  such  accounting  for,  in  itself,  as  we 
need  for  it.  We  are  late,  we  are  ephemeral,  and 
mainly  inconsequent ;  yet  the  fact  that  the  mystery 
is  in  our  own  incompetence  only  lends  dignity  and 
charm  to  its  revelation,  and  to  our  initiation  into  a 
prestige  supremely  worth  while.  Even  though  by 
great  progress  we  should  come  to  a  stage  where  this 
insight  would  be  normal  —  and  why  not,  since  even 
now,  if  we  cared,  we  could  wire  the  round  earth,  and 
whisper  into  our  own  ears  ?  —  yet  let  it  become  com- 
monplace, scientific,  secular  where  now  it  is  com- 
paratively sacred,  still  in  the  culture  of  the  new- 
comer it  must  ever  be  what  Clark  characterized  as 
"an  initiation  of  the  past." 

The  revelation,  for  us,  is  of  sanity  at  its  utmost 
tension  and  interest,  realizing  at  once  the  effort  and 
the  fatuous  incongruity  and  impossibility  of  self- 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   239 

vision,  and  having  a  clear  and  unquestionable  con- 
sciousness that  this  condition  and  this  effort  realize 
the  genius  of  being,  and  effect  the  process  of  time; 
but  above  all  is  a  sense  of  admonition  —  perhaps  an 
after-glow  from  our  religious  associations  —  that 
this  is  the  secret  of  the  world,  inevitably  such;  no 
other  account  of  it  can  be  mentionable  in  the  same 
connection. 

I  have  to  reiterate  that  this  clear  vision  has 
nothing  to  do  with  philosophy.  It  stands  alone, 
"like  Adam's  recollection  of  his  fall."  What  we  in- 
tend by  "the  genius  of  being"  has  no  relation  to  the 
empirical  facts  of  the  world,  nor  to  any  purpose  or 
process  of  "life."  The  problems  of  metaphysics  — 
the  reconciliation  of  the  static  and  dynamic  view- 
points, the  question  as  between  a  sufficient  and  man- 
aging intelligence  and  a  fated  collocation  of  monads 
and  atoms,  or  as  between  a  comprehended  one  or 
whole  and  an  unlimited  diversity  of  ones  which  carry 
the  prime  secret  each  at  its  own  centre  —  all  this  is 
as  nothing  in  the  transcendent  solipsis  where  the 
Monad  is  the  only  One.  The  rest  are  the  things 
which  are  Cassar's. 

We  have  now  to  gather  up  the  dangling  threads 
of  our  story,  and  knot  them  for  a  religion  and  a 
life ;  —  hoping  that  the  fasces  may  have  a  consist- 
ency and  strength  which  may  not  have  been  appre- 
hensible in  the  individual  shafts ;  and  that  the  fond 
monism  that  we  have  dialectically  disparaged  may  be 
at  least  transcendentally  and  mystically  rehabili- 
tated. Our  essay  would  be  wholly  impertinent  (as 
possibly  it  is  in  any  event)  if  it  did  not  so  far  coun- 
tenance the  professorial  obsession  as  to  regard  the 


240  PLURIVERSE 

world  as  this,  and  this  one,  at  least  as  a  topic  for 
discourse  —  such  discourse,  maybe,  as  Emerson  sat- 
irised as  "puss  and  her  tail." 

The  pretensions  of  professional  philosophy  have 
been  heartlessly  disingenuous.  Even  with  Fichte, 
they  were  oriented  less  toward  a  livable  faith  than 
to  a  triumphant  demonstration  of  the  ignorance  in 
which  faith  habitually  reposes.  Your  even  Chris- 
tian does  but  dream  of  the  contradictions  involved  in 
what  he  calls  "the  truth." 

Firstly  then,  our  philosophical  curiosity  arises  as 
to  the  world's  beginning  and  its  making ;  for  we  our- 
selves begin,  and  we  do  some  making,  and  we  natu- 
rally assume  that  the  world  at  large  should  have  such 
an  accounting  for  —  all  the  time  forgetting  that 
any  objective  thing  accounting  for  it  would  have 
the  same  mystery  as  involves  the  thing  itself,  and 
serve  to  merely  postpone  or  push  back  its  "reason" 
—  which  must  be  in  us  if  anywhere,  and  not  otherwise 
required;  ».  e.,  the  secret  of  a  creation  can  be  real- 
ized only  in  our  own  actually  creating;  to  see  the 
fact  as  being  done  were  not  to  detect  the  motive 
force  employed.  Wherefore  the  saying,  "the  reason 
of  things  is  reason." 

Here  the  vulgar  psychology  comes  in,  and  claims 
the  whole  secret  of  so  simple  an  effect  as  the  reason 
of  reason,  in  the  self-relation  of  consciousness  — 
the  "prime  fact"  that  such  is  knowledge  that  it 
knows  itself,  and  is  its  own  ground  and  reason  — 
showing  the  basic  principle  of  all  explanation  and 
all  being.  But  we  have  sufficiently  shown  that  self- 
relation  as  a  theory  is  not  a  philosophy  or  a  logical 
account  of  our  inspired  thought  and  will. 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   241 

Nevertheless  all  our  advices  from  the  anaesthetic 
field  —  and  especially  such  as  that  of  Xenas  Clark 
—  show  that  sanity  at  its  highest  tension  ( and 
interest)  not  only  inheres  in  but  evolves  by  a  curi- 
osity and  effort  for  self-knowledge,  never  dreaming 
that  it  is  but  an  orifice  of  the  supernal  deep  —  a 
mouthpiece  or  mask,  to  be  sure,  but  the  supernal 
has  no  other  voice;  the  monad  is  your  only  one;  for 
no  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time,  save  as  the  Son 
hath  personated  him. 

(We  should  connote  here  the  solipsism  of  Ramsay 
and  Tennyson;  for  the  world  is  full  of  worlds,  as 
many  as  there  are  organisms;  and  to  whom  a  thing 
appears,  that  thing  is.) 

But  now,  for  a  life,  we  turn  back  from  philosophy, 
as  from  the  green-eyed  jealousy  which  makes  the 
meat  that  it  feeds  upon,  to  the  psychology  of  Jesus. 
Dropping  all  theological  controversy  as  such,  and 
listening  only  to  the  voice  of  experience  and  common 
sense,  is  it  not  pragmatically  true  that  every  crea- 
ture is  secondary  and  inspired,  regardless  of  his  in- 
stant conceit  of  originality  —  and  yet  more  pro- 
foundly regardless  of  the  mystery  that  in  that  con- 
ceit may  lurk  the  only  hope  of  ultimate  and  divine 
explanation? 

Said  Hegel :  "It  is  truer  to  say  not  that  we  think, 
but  that  thinking  goes  on  with  us." 

Every  breath  that  we  voluntarily  draw  is,  in  the 
cosmic  sense,  an  irrelevant  interference  with  divine 
providence.  We  have  no  need  to  do  it ;  with  or  with- 
out our  volition  it  will  be  done ;  and  the  determination 
not  to  do  it  —  which  would  be  in  the  least  violent 
method  of  suicide  —  is  one  that  nature  most  essen- 


242  PLURIVERSE 

tially  abhors.  We  have  no  account  of  any  man 
succeeding  in  such  an  attempt,  although  many  have 
thus  experimented. 

Have  we  not  here,  in  this  insistence  of  nature,  the 
occult  basis  of  that  admonition  of  the  Master,  to 
take  no  thought  for  the  morrow,  nor  for  what  we 
shall  eat  or  drink,  nor  for  wherewithal  we  shall  be 
clothed?  How  shall  a  man's  sins  of  the  past  be 
remitted  in  the  divine  assumption  of  their  respon- 
sibility ;  unless  it  shall  be  equally  true  of  the  present 
that  our  heart-strings  are  in  divine  hands,  and  that 
our  native  impulses  are  entitled  to  the  second- 
thought  of  God  with  us? 

But  this  taking  no  thought  for  the  morrow,  and 
the  rendering  unto  Caesar  of  the  things  which  are 
Cassar's,  require  transcendental  interpretation.  Of 
course  one  shall  take  thought,  lest  he  starve,  or  walk 
into  the  fire.  These  things  will  be  according  to 
intention,  and  faith  without  works  is  dead;  but  to 
intend  them  in  the  expectation  of  impunity  were  to 
"tempt  the  Lord,  thy  God."  But  there  should  be 
obvious  here  the  possibility  of  a  serene  composure, 
as  of  a  double  nature,  at  once  active  and  passive, 
that  should  advance  with  a  lofty  courage,  subject 
only  to  the  categorical  imperative  of  its  better  self, 
as  interpreting  all  the  divinity  that  concerns  it. 

What  is  hardest  to  express,  or  to  believe  that 
one  has  expressed,  in  this  connection,  is  the  unique 
fact  which  I  have  again  and  again  reiterated,  that 
it  is  a  revelation  —  the  revelation  of  the  genius  of 
being.  When  this  in  its  turn  is  made  a  topic  for 
criticism  and  gossip,  and  the  assured  and  busied 
commonsense  retorts  that  one  knows  as  much  as 


THE  ANESTHETIC  REVELATION   243 

another  about  that;  or  when  the  metaphysical  ex- 
pert recalls  the  dialectic  difficulties  of  knowledge 
trying  to  know  itself,  or  of  a  becoming  that  con- 
tinues with  only  becoming  for  its  result,  or  of  a 
quasi-re&lity  between  a  future  and  a  past  —  then 
the  inveterate  skeptic  must  have  his  fling:  These 
puzzles,  which  philosophy  has  mumbled  over  for 
thousands  of  years,  are  in  your  tenser  ideation  only 
more  emphatically  intricated  — ».  e.  you  are  more 
aghast  at  the  Mystery  which  still  baffles  definition  — 
else  why  not  define  it?  There  needs  no  ghost  come 
from  the  grave  to  proclaim  the  Mystery;  any  pre- 
tense of  a  revelation  should  rationalize  and  resolve 
it.  In  brief,  wherein  are  you  didactically  the  wiser 
for  it,  as  an  instant  generalization  of  the  classic 
problems  of  philosophy? 

Now,  humbly  begging  pardon,  philosophy  has  had 
heretofore  no  such  generalization  as  is  here  so  superi- 
orly announced.  I  would  respectfully  recall  the  ani- 
madversion of  William  James,  that  there  is  no 
complete  generalization,  whether  in  theory  or  in 
fact,  for  us;  I  have  but  added  my  own  conclusion 
that  there  can  be  none  such  for  any  one.  (The  no- 
tion of  a  finite  God,  if  not  utterly  preposterous,  is 
incongruous  at  its  best.) 

As  Dr.  Johnson  remarked  to  the  aspiring  youth 
who  sought  his  advice  as  to  the  best  dictionary, 
"either  of  them  is  good  enough  for  you,"  so  this 
treatise,  which,  eliminating  monism,  comprehension 
and  self-relation,  should  clear  the  haze  of  what  has 
been  called  philosophy,  may  well  prove,  if  not  a  rev- 
elation, at  least  a  clarification  to  the  average  student, 
especially  if  his  culture  has  utilized  the  regretful 


244  PLURIVERSE 

sentence  of  Herr  Eucken  that  philosophy  as  a  pur- 
suit has  failed. 

But  all  this  pseudo  disparagement  or  deprecation 
and  gwasi-explanation  of  the  classic  Mystery  drifts 
idly  over  the  weird  and  solemn  consciousness  — 
"clearest  of  the  clearest,  surest  of  the  surest,  weird- 
est of  the  weirdest"  —  of  an  intimate  and  personal 
relation  to  the  Inevitable,  whose  continuance  is  in 
and  through  its  wondrous  appreciation  of  its  own 
precedence  and  consequent  necessity. 

I  have  tried  often,  but  cannot  come  nearer  to  the 
Anaesthetic  Revelation.  But  what  then?  It  is  no 
fad  or  bantling  of  mine.  On  the  contrary,  as  Sir 
William  Ramsay  noticed,  many  people  have  en- 
countered it,  and  like  Edmund  Gurney  have  passed 
it  as  unthinkable  in  set  terms  —  without  which  we  can 
neither  know  nor  remember.  But  the  boasted  pro- 
gress of  the  race  will  be  shamelessly  inadequate  if  we 
have  come  to  a  time  when  the  historical  secret  which 
philosophy  has  coveted  is  empirically  accessible,  only 
to  be  inconsequently  neglected. 

After  this,  our  best  (however  unsatisfactory) 
pronouncement,  the  persistent  reiteration,  "What  is 
your  revelation?"  or,  "What  is  it  about?"  is  in  bad 
form  —  a  kind  of  counting  of  the  spoons.  Know- 
ing is  the  soul's  all,  whether  in  her  birth,  her  bridal, 
her  business  or  her  vacation.  Man  fell  for  knowl- 
edge. Knowing  is  the  excellence  and  the  ecstasy  of 
being ;  it  is  everything,  to  be  —  a  constant  gratula- 
tion  over  what  is  not,  or  is  potentially  or  con- 
jecturally.  It  is  investiture  in  the  purple,  in  the 
divine  right,  and  it  is  sufficient  in  itself. 

And  now  inexorable  Time  admonishes  me  to  have 


THE  ANAESTHETIC  REVELATION   245 

done  with  this  world.  I  am  thankful  at  having  seen 
the  show;  and  although,  after  eighty-five  years,  the 
stars  are  flickering  slightly,  and  the  winds  are  some- 
thing worn,  I  am  still  clear  and  confident  in  that 
religion  of  courage  and  content  which  cherishes 
neither  regrets  nor  anticipations. 

Yet  one  little  dream  I  would  have  come  true: 
Somewhere,  anywhere,  though  hopefully  at  some  not- 
unfrequented  garden-side,  my  dust,  with  its  "all-ob- 
literated tongue,"  should  seem  to  inspire  the  legend 
—  low  by  the  veiling  grass,  but  cut  deep  into  endur- 
ing stone: 

GREETING IF  THOU   HAST   KNOWN! 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY, 
THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET 

A  JURY  of  common-sense  men  might  well  be 
excused  for  a  verdict,  over  their  book  oaths, 
that   there  is   no   important   sense  in  what 
follows  here;  but  the  same  jury,  asked  if  they  had 
ever  heard 

The  Koms  of  elfland  faintly  blowing, 
would  probably  make  some  haste  in  the  protestation 
that  they  never  had.  Common-sense  men  as  such 
are  not  philosophers,  and  they  are  not  concerned 
with  the  fact  that  logical  truth  is  held  to  the  arbitra- 
ment of  language,  the  production  and  determination 
of  which  are  therefore  of  prime  importance  in  phil- 
osophical explanation. 

It  was  on  a  June  morning  in  1854  that  I  entered 
the  publishing  house  of  James  Munroe  and  Com- 
pany of  Boston  (and  Cambridge)  with  a  manu- 
script which  soon  evoked  a  discussion  as  to  why  the 
word  icicle  was  not  a  fit  name  for  a  tub.  That  it 
is  not  was  promptly  agreed,  but  its  unfitness  grew 
into  so  many  varieties  of  discrepancy  which  no 
single  principle  would  account  for  that  the  seeming 
levity  of  the  question  sank  under  considerations  of 
philogical  interest  and  importance. 

246 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          247 

Something  in  the  natural  sound  of  the  spoken 
words  was  the  first  relevant  suggestion;  when  you 
set  down  a  tub  it  responds  to  that  name.  The  shapes 
of  the  two  things  are  also  responsive:  the  tub  is 
short  and  stubby,  while  the  icicle  is  spindling  and 
slim. 

These  points  were  very  well  taken  — i.  e.,  the 
differences  of  sound  and  form;  but  numberless  other 
characteristics  appeared.  The  icicle  is  delicate,  it 
is  clear,  brilliant,  fragile,  with  at  least  a  suspicion 
of  moisture,  while  the  tub  is  merely  fibrous  and  dry. 
All  this  goes  without  saying,  in  a  certain  aesthetic 
appreciation,  which  does  not  yet  generalize  the  gen- 
ius which  vulgarizes  the  tub.  To  illustrate  this, 
consider  the  use  of  the  words  entrails,  reins,  bowels 
—  all  good  in  scientific  and  social  discourse,  but  for 
some  unmentionable  reason  classic  culture  draws  the 
line  at  guts! 

"Well,  what  is  the  trouble  with  guts?" 

I  expounded  here  that  they  were  vulgarized  by  the 
absurd  genius  of  u  flat.  And  did  a  letter  have  a 
genius?  and  would  I  refer  to  my  manuscript  and 
oblige  with  the  genius  of  u  flat?  I  responded  as 
follows,  to  wit: 

"U,  guttural,  or  flat,  is  a  humorous  savage,  best 
described  in  his  own  words:  a  huge,  lubberly,  blun- 
dering dunderhead,  a  blubbering  numskull  and  a 
dunce,  ugly,  sullen,  dull,  clumsy,  rugged,  gullible, 
glum,  dumpish,  lugubrious  —  a  stumbler,  mumbler, 
bungler,  grumbler,  jumbler  —  a  grunter,  thumper, 
tumbler,  stunner  —  a  drudge,  a  trudge ;  he  lugs, 
tugs,  sucks,  juggles,  and  is  up  to  all  manner  of 
bulls  —  a  musty,  fussy,  crusty,  disgusting  brute, 


248  PLURIVERSE 

whose  head  is  his  mug,  his  nose  is  a  snub,  or  a  pug,  his 
ears  are  lugs,  his  breasts  dugs,  his  bowels  guts,  his 
victuals  grub,  his  garments  duds,  his  hat  a  plug,  his 
child  a  cub,  his  dearest  diminutive  is  chub  or  bub  or 
runt ;  at  his  best  he  is  bluff,  gruff,  blunt ;  'his  doublet 
is  of  sturdy  buff  and  though  not  sword,  is  'cudgel 
proof ;  budge  he  will  not,  but  will  drub  you  with  a 
club,  or  a  slug,  nub,  stub,  butt,  or  rub  you  with 
mud  —  for  he  is  ever  in  a  muss  or  a  fuss  —  and 
should  you  call  him  a  grudging  curmudgeon  he  gulps 
up  "ugh,  fudge,  stuff,  rubbish,  humbug"  in  high 
dudgeon ;  he  is  a  rough,  a  blood-tub,  a  bummer,  and 
a  "tough  cuss"  all  around ;  he  has  some  humor,  more 
crudity,  but  no  delicacy;  of  all  nationalities  you 
would  take  him  for  a  Dutchman." 

It  is  rather  remarkable,  in  so  far  as  the  muscular 
effort  of  utterance  might  be  relevant,  that  the  con- 
tinuous or  long  u  serves  for  the  very  opposite  effect, 
as  we  see  it  in  the  true,  the  pure,  the  sure,  the  beauti- 
ful, the  gude.  "True  blue"  is  a  proverb  of  the  high- 
est worth. 

As  for  the  Dutchman  above,  it  may  be  recalled 
that  formerly  we  had  a  religious  association  called 
the  Dutch  Reformed  Church.  For  a  long  and 
struggling  time  its  sturdy  independence  clung  stoutly 
to  the  name  Dutch,  but  with  assured  prosperity  came 
a  more  amenable  style,  and  the  Dutch  prefix  was 
omitted  from  what  is  now  called  the  Reformed 
Church. 

Yet  it  was  not  wholly  the  u  flat  in  Dutch  that  dis- 
qualified it  for  devotional  suggestion,  but  the  tch  was 
exceptionable:  itch,  bitch,  pitch,  all  defile;  but  when 
the  bard  of  natural  history  congratulates  himself  that 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          249 
The  gray  bitch  hold*  to  the  death, 

we    realize    a    manly    poetry    which    the    tea-table 
would  resent. 

All  the  reading  of  my  serious  years  has  been  at- 
tended by  this  side  consideration:  that  each  of 
the  sounds  represented  by  the  several  letters  of  the 
alphabet  is  specially  effective  in  conveying  a  cer- 
tain significance;  and  wherever  language  is  popular 
and  happy  it  is  so  in  accordance  with  these  early 
intuitions.  That  I  was  not  singular  in  this  sensi- 
tiveness I  was  assured  by  hints  dropped  by  Sweden- 
borg  and  the  poet  Burns;  but  I  had  not  as  yet 
chanced  upon  the  "Kratylus"  of  Plato  when  I  an- 
onymously issued  a  characterization  of  the  meanings 
of  all  the  alphabetic  sounds.  The  subject  of  that 
essay  came  up  to  me  again,  some  years  afterward,  on 
the  occasion  of  Mr.  Stephen  Pearl  Andrews's  issuing 
his  theory  in  the  Continental  Magazine.  Seeing  his 
article  therein,  I  sent  him  my  essay,  and  received  in 
return  his  cordial  astonishment  at  the  fact  that  I, 
an  unread  tyro,  had  come  by  nature  or  instinct  upon 
mainly  the  same  results  which  he  claimed  to  have  de- 
duced as  scientific  necessities.  He  said  his  next 
article  in  the  Continental  should  include  the  gist 
of  my  essay;  but,  sadly  enough,  the  magazine  had 
come  to  its  final  end.  In  1868  I  made  some  extracts 
from  my  essay  for  Putnam's  Magazine,  and  that 
periodical  also  soon  after  went  under  in  the  current  of 
literature.  In  all  this  time  I  knew  nothing  of  the 
"Kratylus,"  and  I  do  not  know  even  now  whether  Mr. 
Andrews  was  better  informed  than  myself.  These 


250  PLURIVERSE 

statements  are  to  be  considered  —  and,  fortunately, 
it  is  the  custom  of  gentlemen  to  believe  one  another  — 
otherwise  what  follows  might  seem  at  best  only  a  les- 
son improved;  but  when  it  truly  appears  that  as  a 
youth  of  inconsiderable  reading  I  in  English  un- 
knowingly concurred  with  Plato  in  Greek,  in  the 
interpretation  of  the  sounds  of  a  half  dozen  of  the 
letters,  the  fact  has  philological  value  as  an  unpreju- 
diced approval  of  Plato's  observation.  For  my  own 
part  I  can  cheerfully  forego  the  originality  for  the 
comfort  of  the  coincidence.  There  is  good  assur- 
ance that  Plato  did  not  borrow  from  my  list,  in  the 
fact  that  in  any  case  he  left  several  of  the  more 
significant  letters  behind  him ;  and  even  those  mean- 
ings which  he  did  express  seem  to  have  only  a 
brawny  immediacy  which  would  be  useless  in  the  far 
and  fine  suggestions  of  modern  poetical  art. 

The  use  of  words  of  mere  onomatopy  —  buzz,  hiss, 
wheeze,  sneeze,  splash,  slush,  hum,  roar,  jingle  — 
requires  little  or  no  skill ;  but  the  meagre  and  savage 
art  which  produced  these  imitations  was  precursory 
and  prophetic  of  a  later  and  more  delicate  and  more 
complex  suggestiveness,  reaching  beyond  mere  sounds 
to  the  faintest  modes  and  qualities  of  fibre,  surface, 
lustre,  distance,  motion,  humor,  solemnity,  contempt 
—  characters  won  out  of  all  the  phenomena  of  life, 
and  answering  to  the  fullest  knowledge,  or  intuition, 
or  inspiration,  of  all  the  mental  phenomena  of  the 
world  at  the  moment  of  its  use  —  to  the  true  estimate 
of  the  comparative  age  and  sesthetic  value  of  thought 
and  things  —  in  brief,  to  the  universality  of  ex- 
perience. The  essence  we  would  precipitate  rises 
as  an  aroma  out  of  the  process  of  the  growth  and 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          251 

decay  of  all  things,  and  it  is  effected  by  considera- 
tions the  faintest  and  most  remote,  in  the  attenua- 
tions of  which  a  great  poet  may  transcend  the 
apprehension  of  his  less  devoted  readers. 

I  give  here  my  alphabet  as  at  first  printed,  with  a 
few  merely  abstract  sketches  taken  from  my  quite 
elaborate  essay  —  little  known  and  long  forgotten. 
The  reader  shall  judge  whether  or  not  it  deserved  its 
fate. 

MAN'S  NATURAL  ALPHABET 

at  vastness,  space,  plane. 

a:  flatness. 

b:  brawn,  bulk,  initial  force. 

c:  soft,  as  s;  hard,  as  k. 

ch,  tch:    a  disgusting  consistency. 

d:  (initial)   determination,  violence. 

d:  (final)  solidity,  end. 

e:  convergence,  intensity,  concentration. 

J1' S  ethereality,  fineness  of  fibre. 

g:    (hard)  hardness. 

gl:  hardness  and  polish. 

gr:  hardness  and  roughness,  grit,  grain. 

i:    thinness,  slimness,  fineness. 

I:    inclining  directions. 

kt  fineness  of  light  and  sound. 

I:    polish,  chill,  liquidity. 

m:  monotony. 

n:    negation,  contempt. 

o:    volume,  solemnity,  nobility. 

p:   volume  without  fibre,  pulp. 

q:    queer,  questionable. 

r:   roughness,  vibration. 

s:    moisture. 

sh:  wet  confusion. 

u:    crudity,  absurdity. 

v»  w»  7!    vehemence,  general  emphasis. 

z:    hare,  dry  confusion. 


252  PLURIVERSE 

Diphthong*: 

au:  vaulting,  curving  upward. 

ou:  roundness,  downward. 

oi :  coil  —  external 

ei :  coil  —  internal. 

ia:  downward  and  away  —  flourish. 

As  the  compositor  locates  his  types  before  him  in 
his  case  for  his  own  convenience  rather  than  as  fol- 
lowing the  conventional  order  of  the  alphabet,  so  we 
must  treat  firstly  the  five  vowels,  on  which  all  the 
other  letters  expend  their  force. 

a.  —  "Far,  far  away,  over  the  calm  and  mantling 
wave"  —  so  begins  the  boy's  first  romance  —  the 
poetry  of  the  ocean,  of  vastness,  space,  plane.  The 
word  ocean,  is  used  only  for  rolling  and  dashing 
effects;  the  leave,  the  main,  vast  waters,  watery 
waste,  or  plain,  are  the  poetical  synonyms  of  ocean. 
Lake,  vale,  straight,  chase,  race,  trail,  trace,  away, 
give  distance  and  plane.  Near  at  hand,  long  a  gives 
effect  to  slate,  scale,  flake,  plate,  cake,  etc.  Waver, 
shake,  quake,  show  horizontal  vibration. 

a.  —  The  flat  a  shows  its  effect  in  mat,  pack,  strap, 
slap,  platter,  flap,  pat,  flat,  clap,  etc. ;  dash,  splash, 
thrash,  give  flat  and  lowdown  effects.  A  stone  much 
broken,  yet  retaining  its  bulk,  is  said  to  be  crushed, 
but  if  its  form  is  borne  down  it  is  mashed,  smashed, 
etc.  Burns,  in  his  poem,  "The  Vowels,"  calls  a  "a 
grave,  broad,  solemn  wight";  this  character  belongs 
to  a  only  as  in  ah,  or  o  flat. 

e.  —  Swedenborg  said  that  the  angels  who  love 
most  use  much  the  sound  of  o,  while  the  more  intel- 
lectual and  penetrating  use  more  the  sound  of  e. 
Burns's  notion  of  e  was  that  of  intense  grief,  as  in 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          253 

"greeting"  (that  is,  in  Scotch,  weeping).  The  gen- 
eral use  of  e  is  for  concentration  and  convergence, 
or  intensity,  the  bringing  of  thought  to  a  focus.  All 
the  pet  names  and  endearing  diminutives  end  in  e  — 
the  wee  things  —  the  lee-tie,  tee-ny  things.  The 
child  dwells  on  the  e  in  pe'-ep,  or  pe'-ek,  and  in 
me'-an,  ke'-an,  sne'-aking,  etc.  Not  so  the  baby 
when  he  gives  you  his  rattle-box ;  he  opens  his  mouth 
and  his  heart  with  the  instinct  of  the  dative  case, 
and  says  "tah !"  —  outward  and  away.  So  when  he 
gets  the  wrong  thing  in  his  mouth  his  mother  cries 
"Ka!  spit  it  out";  whence  possibly,  the  Greek  kakos 
—  bad,  as  applied  to  things.  The  introspective 
Hamlet  says,  "making  night  hideous  and  we  fools  of 
nature,"  instead  of  us,  the  objective  case.  Zeal, 
squeal,  screech  —  to  be,  to  see,  to  feel,  are  strong  by 
the  use  of  e. 

t  —  I,  short,  as  in  pin,  has  a  stiff,  prim,  thin, 
slim,  spindling  effect,  as  of  the  "bristling  pines" ;  or 
when  "Swift  Camilla"  "skims  along  the  main."  It 
has  a  thinning,  perpendicularly  attenuating  effect. 
A  "light  skiff"  is  well  mentioned ;  and  a  "thin  whiff." 
0  hark,  0  hear,  how  thin  and  clear! 

Short  i  has  a  very  lightening  effect  in  sounds :  as 
in  tinkle,  clink,  link  —  thin  metallic  sounds  of  a  per- 
pendicular vibration.  But  flat,  or  horizontal  vibra- 
tion uses  a,  as  in  clank  —  as  of  a  sheet  of  zinc 
slapping  the  floor;  how  different  from  the  clang  of 
a  bar  of  steel !  Tin  is  a  good  word  for  that  metal 
in  the  thin  shape  most  commonly  known ;  but  in  the 
native  bulk  and  volume  we  call  it  block. 

i  —  Long  i  gives  inclination.  "The  clouds  con- 
sign their  treasures  to  the  field."  "In  winter  when 


254  PLURIVERSE 

the  dismal  rain  comes  down  in  slanting  lines."  I 
long  and  a  give  a  poetical  curve,  downward  and 
away: 

"Once  in  the  flight  of  ages  past." 
"Many  an  hour  I've  whiled  away." 
"Swilled  by  the  wild  and  wasteful  ocean." 
"Some  happier  island  in  the  watery  waste." 
"O  when  shall  it  dawn  on  the  night  of  the  grave?" 
"Athens,  and  Tyre,  and  Balbec,  and  the  waste 

Where  stood  Jerusalem" 
"0,  wild  enchanting  horn." 

o.  —  Plato  seems  to  have  done  miserable  injus- 
tice in  characterizing  for  simple  roundness  the  vowel 
o  —  the  noblest  Roman,  or  Greek  either,  of  them  all. 
Roundness  is  well  enough  —  although  roundness 
proper  is  represented  by  ou  diphthong  —  but  round- 
ness is  merely  the  key  to  volume,  solemnity,  nobility, 
and  wonder.  Read  this  most  solemn  sentence  in  all 
literature,  and  see  at  once  the  more  serious  meaning 
of  o: 

For  man  goeth  to  his  long  home,  and  the  mourners 
go  about  the  streets. 

Not  all  the  trappings  and  the  suits  of  woe  can 
so  pall  the  sunlight  in  the  homes  of  men  as  does  the 
fit  reading  of  this  sombre  verse.  Burns's  idea  of 
o  was  expressed  in  "the  wailing  minstrel  of  despair- 
ing woe."  Swedenborg's  insight  was  rather  one  of 
adoration  or  devotion.  But  these  comparatively  in- 
cidental expressions  give  way  before  the  philological 
art  of  more  modern  writers.  All  things  noble, 
holy,  adorable,  or  sombre,  slow,  sober,  dolorous, 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET1          255 

mournful,  devotional,  or  old,  lone,  sole,  glorious,  or 
even  bold,  portly,  pompous,  find  their  best  expres- 
sion in  the  o  sound.  Jehovah,  Jove,  Lord  God, 
exalt  the  soul.  O,  ho,  lo,  are  exclamations  which 
nations  use  with  little  variance. 

"0  Rome,  my  country,  city  of  the  soul, 

The  orphans  of  the  heart  must  turn  to  thee." 
"0  sad  Nomore,  O  sweet  Nomore." 
"Roll  on,  thou  deep  and  dark-blue  ocean,  roll." 
"Their  shots  along  the  deep  slowly  boom" 
"The  lowing  herds  wind  slowly  o'er  the  lea, 
The  plowman  homeward  plods  his  weary  way" 

Most  people  think  of  a  boulder  as  a  big,  bulky 
stone;  the  dictionaries  use  the  word  for  a  class  of 
stones  of  which  one  need  not  be  greater  than  a  pea. 
The  o  gives  the  volume,  and  the  initial  b  gives  the 
bulk  and  brawn  —  which  make  a  favorite  dictionary 
so  popular  as  the  "unaBridged."  Yet  in  pebble, 
which  is  one  third  made  up  of  b,  we  get  no  bulk  at 
all,  owing  to  e  and  p. 

u.  —  Burns  had  some  notion  of  the  effect  of  u; 
he  speaks  of  it  as  "grim,  deformed,  with  horrors  en- 
tering"; but  obviously  this  was  only  a  careless 
glance  of  that  great  genius,  who  probably  had  never 
thought  of  the  character  before,  and  who  possibly 
never  thought  of  it  again.  But  we  have  had  enough 
of  u. 

Of  the  diphthongs,  au  seems  to  me  effective  in 
vault  (to  leap  or  swing),  flaunt,  toss  (taus),  saun- 
ter, jaunt,  haughty,  walk,  halting,  and  the  like.  Ou 
is  the  curve  of  roundness,  as  in  bough,  bow  down, 
crown,  around,  mound,  bound  (tied  around). 


256  PLURIVERSE 

"Down  the  shouldering  billows  borne."  Oi  strikes  me 
forcibly  in  coil.  lou  is  a  favorite  curve  with  the 
poets. 

"And  false  the  light  on  glory's  plume" 
"The  wide  old  wood  resounded  to  her  song" 
"Of  love's,  and  night's,  and  ocean's  solitude." 

But  the  vowels  are  weak  and  delicate  when  com- 
pared with  the  consonants,  which  give  to  language 
its  fibre  and  its  nerve. 

b.  —  As  a  special  intensity,  b  represents  the  dis- 
position to  swell  out  the  cheeks  and  utter  an  exag- 
gerating   and    sometimes    contemptuous    explosion, 
such  as  boo!  bah!  bosh!  bully!  bravo!  etc.      B  gives 
volume  in  a  crude  and  semi-humorous  mode.     Thus 
brawny,   brusque,   blunt,   burly,   bulky,   big,   bully, 
brazen,  besides  carrying  a  certain  direct  and  proper 
meaning,  reject  all  refinement  in  favor  of  a  humor- 
ous brag,  burlesque,  and  exaggeration  of  the  Brob- 
dignagian,    "unabridged"    order.     It    is    especially 
strong    in    connection    with    u    short  —  a    regular 
"buster,"   a  "big  bug,"   bugbear,   Bluebeard,    and 
bugaboo  —  a  bombastic,  brazen  buck  and  blower. 

c.  —  This  letter  is  only  *  and  k  as  convertible, 
and  has  little  individuality;  that  little  is  a  kind  of 
slipperiness ;  ch  and  tch  are  used  for  absurdity  as 
bordering  on  disgust.     This  in  itch,  bitch,  botch, 
kutch,  scotch  (to  haggle  or  wound),  smutch,  smirch, 
screech,  etc.,  a  class  of  words  avoided  by  refined 
society,  because  their  humor  is  offensive. 

d.  —  Plato  used  d  and  t  alike  for  determination 
or  binding  at  an  end.     We  see  the  effect  of  d  imme- 
diately in  wad,  sod,  clod,  load,  rugged,  leaden,  dead. 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET         257 

The  short  report  of  a  heavily  loaded  pistol  is  well 
caught  in  the  word  explode. 

"Earth's  cities  had  no  sound  nor  tread, 
And  ships  were  drifting  with  the  dead 
To  shores  where  all  was  dumb" 

As  initial,  or  beginning  a  word,  d  shovs  a  resolved 
or  violent  disposition,  as  if  the  teeth  were  set:  thus 
in  damn,  dare,  do,  dig,  drive,  dogged,  etc.  The 
metal  lead  is  well  named ;  so  are  iron,  tin,  and  silver. 
What  little  effect  t  has,  as  apart  from  h,  is  certainly 
similar  to  that  of  d,  as  Plato  averred. 

f,  h,  t,  and  th.  —  These  are  the  ethereal,  softening 
letters,  whose  fibre  is  the  most  fine  and  attenuated, 
as  of  breath  without  resonance.     Thus  in  smooth, 
soothe,  breathe,  feathery,  Lethean,  muffled,  smoth- 
ered, far,  faint,  forgetful,  Sabbath,  suffocate,  froth, 
stuff,  muff,  whiff,  etc. 

"The  effusive  South 

Warms  the  wide  air,  and  o'er  the  vault  of  heaven 
Breathes  the  big  clouds,  with  vernal  showers  distent. 
At  first  a  dusky  wreath  they  seem,  to  rise, 
Scarce  staining  ether." 

"Lethe,  the  river  of  oblivion,  rolls 
Her  watery  labyrinth." 

g,  I,  and  r.  —  These  are  the  giant  consonants,  ex- 
pressive of  unquestionable  and  unequivocal  power. 
There  is  no  humor,  chaff,  or  nonsense  about  them, 
and  "baby  talk"  excludes  them.    Each  has  a  distinct 
force,  which  yet  is  most  effective  in  union  with  one 


258  PLURIVERSE 

of  the  others.  G  is  the  hard  letter,  r  is  the  rough 
and  vibratory  letter,  and  I  is  the  chilling  and  polish- 
ing letter.  Thus  gr  gives  the  hard  roughness  to 
grit,  grate,  grind,  grained,  gravel,  grim,  grudge, 
growl,  groan,  grunt,  etc.,  while  gl  is  effective  in  glass, 
glary,  glide,  etc.  R  by  itself  is  strong  in  bur,  mar, 
blur,  scar,  rude,  roar,  rush,  writhe,  scour,  crisp, 
fry,  fritter,  fragment,  broken,  gnarled,  burly,  tor- 
rent, etc.,  etc. 

"The  hoarse,  rough  verse  should  like  the  torrent 
roar" 
"The  wrinkled  sea  beneath  him  crawls** 

"The  crisped  brooks,"  says  Milton,  and  a  hun- 
dred poets  after  him. 

Though  the  ocean's  inmost  heart  be  pure, 
Yet  the  salt  fringe  that  daily  licks  the  shore 
Is  gross  with  sand. 

Foreknowing  that  *  is  the  wet  or  moist  letter,  note 
how  the  brackish  wash,  the  grit  of  the  sand  in  the 
brine,  is  rendered  in  the  word  gross  above.  Tenny- 
son, also,  has  a  quick  expression  of  this  briny  wash, 
where  the  sail-boat  is  said  to  "cut  the  shrill  salt," 
etc.  But  how  dry  and  deep-carved  is  the  figure  fol- 
lowing, of  a  sleeping  poet: 

Dropt  in  my  path  like  a  great  cup  of  gold, 
All  rich  and  rough  with  stories  of  the  gods. 

L,  by  itself,  makes  all  clear,  lucid,  placid,  liquid; 
it  is  the  polish  of  glow,  gleam,  glide,  glassy,  glance, 
glitter,  etc.  The  I  lends  the  cold,  metallic  qual- 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          259 

ity  to  the  solidity  of  lead;  it  gives  lustre  and  ring  to 
silver,  as  the  r  roughens  and  darkens  iron.  "Hear 
the  sledges  with  their  bells."  For  the  little  bells  we 
have  "the  tintinnabulation  that  so  musically  swells." 
Jc.  —  K  must  be  taken  into  all  account  of  fine 
sounds  and  lights,  usually  with  i  and  a;  thus  in 
twinkle,  tinkle,  flicker,  sparkle,  crackle,  link,  chink, 
trickle;  so  in  fibrous  attenuations:  nick,  splick  (the 
quarryman's  name  for  a  chip  of  stone),  skin,  skiff, 
skip,  skim,  skive,  sketch. 

"How  they  tinkle,  tinkle,  tinkle, 

In  the  icy  air  of  night, 
While  the  stars  that  over-sprinkle 
All  the  heavens  seem  to  twinkle 
With  a  Crystalline  delight." 

This  of  Poe  is  comparatively  cheap  work,  but  the 
reader  must  detect  in  it  the  same  instinct  by  which 
the  far-seeing  Tennyson  makes  the  steeds  in  "Ti- 
thonus" 

shake  the  darkness  from  their  loosened  manes, 

And  beat  the  twilight  into  flakes  of  fire. 

" e'er  my  steps 

Forgot  the  barefoot  feel  of  the  clay  world." 
"Like  scaled  oarage  of  a  keen,  thin  fish." 

" whose  diapason  whirls 

The  clanging  constellations  round  the  pole." 

I  cannot,  of  course,  be  sure  that  the  general 
reader  is  with  me  at  the  insight  of  these  fine  dis- 
tinctions, and  I  beg  him  to  consider  that  I  might  well 


260  PLURIVERSE 

exchange  my  confidence  in  his  mutual  appreciation 
for  a  vindictive  and  scientific  criticism,  which  should 
prove  my  positions  out  of  the  preferences  (some 
might  call  them  thieveries)  of  the  poets  themselves. 
Take  these  letters,  Jc  and  I.  Burns  sang: 

"Peggy,  dear,  the  evening's  clear, 
Swift  flies  the  skimming  swallow." 

Both  Tennyson  and  Alexander  Smith  appropri- 
ate the  skimming  swallow.  Or  take  the  word  clang- 
ing, quoted  above.  It  first  appears  in  the  "Odys- 
sey," applied  to  geese.  Mr.  Alexander  Smith  (who 
gave  promise  of  poetry)  grasped  the  situation  as 
his  own.  He  sings: 

Unto  whose  fens  on  midnights  blue  and  cold 

Long  strings  of  geese  come  clanging  from  the  stars. 

Shelley,  in  "The  Revolt  of  Islam,"  is  so  beset  by 
this  notion  of  clanging  that  he  uses  it  twice: 

With  clang  of  wings  and  scream  the  eagle  passed. 
With  clang  of  wings  and  scream  the  eagle  flew. 

In  spite  of  this  repetition  the  Laureate  clangs 
three  times  more:  in  "Locksley  Hall"  he  "leads  the 
clanging  rookery  home";  in  "The  Princess,"  "The 
leader  wild  swan  in  among  the  stars  would  clang  it" ; 
and  again,  in  the  same,  "But  I,  an  eagle,  clang  an 
eagle  to  the  sphere."  There  may  seem  little  apposi- 
tion of  clanging  and  mere  flesh  and  feathers,  accord- 
ing to  the  genius  of  the  letters  as  herein  assumed; 
but  if  one  will  consider  eagle  a  hard  word,  for  a 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          261 

hard,  metallic  bird,  fit  to  fight  a  golden-scaled  ser- 
pent in  the  air,  then  the  clanging  may  come  in  with 
high  poetical  advantage.  So  midnights  "blue  and 
cold,"  with  a  glitter  of  crystal  stars,  and  the  yelling, 
and  jangling,  and  mingling  of  geese,  may  find  voice 
in  clanging. 

TO.  —  This  is  the  letter  of  dreamy  murmur  and 
monotony;  hum,  rumble,  moan  are  onomatopoetic. 
Memory  is  the  poet's  dearest  word. 

n.  —  All  nations  agree  in  saying  no.  There  is 
hardly  a  language  in  the  world  in  which  n  is  not  the 
chief  element  of  negation.  Plato  makes  n  the  sign 
of  inwardness  (as  translated)  ;  intensity  of  with- 
drawal were  better.  It  is  a  nasal  sound,  which  is 
intensified  by  drawing  up  the  muscles  of  contempt 
at  the  sides  of  the  nose  —  as  when  we  dwell  upon 
mean,  sneaking,  n-asty. 

p.  —  This  letter  shows  the  character  I  have  given 
it  in  such  words  as  plump,  lump,  pulp,  voluptuous, 
sleep,  dump,  ripe,  lip,  purple. 

q.  —  Queer,  questionable,  quaint,  quizzical,  quip, 
quirk,  quiddity,  quillet,  squeak,  squeal,  squint, 
squeamish,  squelch,  qualm,  quit,  quash,  etc.  show 
q  as  the  organ  of  the  whimsical  and  outre  —  the  very 
opposite  of  o. 

s.  —  Moist,  misty,  nasty,  sticky,  steam,  slop,  slip, 
slush,  dash,  swash,  drizzle,  all  suggest  water  in  its 
different  stages ;  even  ice  is  kept  wet  by  the  c.  Lus- 
cious,  delicious,  nutri(c)ious,  suggest  juicy  sub- 
stances. 

sh,  either  initial  or  final,  suggests  moist  confusion ; 
thus,  initially  we  have  shiver,  shatter,  shake,  shrivel, 
shrink,  shred;  finally,  we  have  dash,  clash,  lash, 


262  PLURIVERSE 

thrash,  swash,  smash,  trash,  rush,  gush,  mush,  slush, 
etc. 


the  sun  new  risen 


Looks  through  the  horizontal  misty  air 

Shorn  of  his  beams." 

"The  stars  obtuse  emit  a  shivered  ray" 

v.  —  Perhaps  one  tenth  of  the  words  which  be- 
gin with  v  have  an  element  of  vehemence:  vim,  vio- 
lence, victory,  vanquish,  velocity,  vigor,  vice,  ven- 
geance, villainy. 

W  and  y  also  have  general  emphasis. 

z.  —  This  is  a  dreamy  letter,  of  hazy,  mazy,  dry 
confusion;  a  lazy,  drowsy,  dozing,  furzy,  dizzy, 
vi(z)ionary  atmosphere  attends  it,  in  which  the  gen- 
ius of  Thomson  delighted. 

A  pleazing  land  of  drowzyhead  it  waz. 

There  was  a  question  as  to  a  certain  Turk:  Did 
he  wear  the  fez? 

O.  Henry  answered:  "No,  he  was  clean  shaved." 

The  most  indulgent  reader  will  almost  necessarily 
suspect  that  as  a  youth  with  these  prepossessions  I 
occasionally  dropped  into  poetry  on  my  own  ac- 
count ;  and  for  purely  psychological  purposes  — 
where  any  literary  pretension  would  hardly  obtain 
—  I  quote  frankly  a  specimen  of  what  then  seemed 
to  me  poetry  of  the  best : 

THE  PIRATE 

On  a  haggard  rock  in  the  Middle  Sea 
Where  grizzly  Waves  lash  dismally 
And  sullen  horror  reigns, 


THE  POETICAL  ALPHABET          263 

There  the  wind  went  by  with  a  crazy  moan, 
And  the  gibbet  creaked  with  an  iron  groan 
Where  the  Pirate  hung  in  chains. 

And  beneath,  far  down,  the  sea  birds  gray 
Winged  slow  and  cold  through  briny  spray 

With  lonely,  yelping  strains, 
And  the  phantom  ship  with  its  twilight  sail 
Leaned  far  away,  on  a  hopeless  trail 

From  the  Pirate,  hung  in  chains. 

Lo,  the  lightning  struck  in  the  iron-work 
When  thunder  storms  rushed  grim  and  dark 

O'er  ocean's  nighted  plains, 
But  the  morning  came  with  a  ghastly  smile, 
And  blue  with  fire,  on  the  rocky  isle, 

The  Pirate  hung  in  chains. 


A     000411200 


